Entirely subjective. My fun is not your fun. My fun in this case does not effect your fun. Its like saying your religion is the only proper one, or your sexuality, or your nationality, or your taste in ****, or taste in ice cream. How could anyone possibly like cookie dough, chocolate is where the fun is at!

My own picks would be - Republic Spy - with Bothan race option. Another stealth class, CC expert. Light armor, Can use sniper rifles. Republic Gladiator - Melee Class, uses techblades. Tank, DPS. Heavy armor. Sort of a street urchin/ganger concept. Imperial Crimson Guard - All those non-force dudes with the red robes and knives on their hats, techstaves mainly, counter to the gladiator. Medium armor. Imperial Shock Trooper - Assault cannon user, for imperials, with cool armor options. Heavy armor.

I've had 2 bugs related to this issue with my Imp Agent Armortech: 1) Kaliyo the Magic Crafter - Simply phasing or logging/relogging can sometimes make Kaliyo (and only her) instantly craft everything in her queue. This happens fairly consistently, maybe 20% of the time. Just setting up the queue, then going into my ship and back out will do this. Unfortunately, Temple is a better crafter, so this trick isn't necessarily useful. 2) Re-order - This happens with my armstech and armortech, I'll relog to an alt and log back in to check progress. All my queues will be in some random order than when I left. Notably though, I've never had items switch out on me completely, just the queue order.

Family tree is currently just a wierd cosmetic thing that you can mess with for about 3 minutes.

"The company also expects to release more expansion content for “Star Wars” this year — including two expansion packs in the current quarter." Perhaps Wall Street speak for "patch 1.3 and 1.4"?

After a lot of recent analysis of VENONA, serious scholars have given McCarthy a score of 9 spies out of 159 occused. Damned liberals and their research. A 7.5% chance at being correct, as well as jumping the gun publically, I'd have racked him up as a security risk and Guantanomoed his butt, but he's conservative so outing spy and counterespionage operations (a la Cheney) is ok. His bluster bluster and impatience brought nothing to the debate, nor did it help the services actually trying to catch the actual spies. I'll wait for Colin Powel to be vindicated when they finally find those weapons of mass destruction instead, seems more likely...sometime in the future. Anywho... Did we ever reach the conclusion, are there new armor schematics in the game or not? I gathered after reading through about 15 pages that there might or might not be, and never reached a conclusion. I personally haven't seen hide nor hair of new weapons save for the "customized" and "elegant" series, nor have I seen any new recipes, schematics, or resulting armor pieces after 100's of missions (2 UWT characters x 5 running 12 hours/day). I have seen legacy weapon tokens drop from Investigation missions taken at all levels, in case anyone was wondering. I now have about 6 such tokens saved up which are unsellable and basically useless. Other than that, nada. So what is the final verdict? New orange armor or no? Coming in 1.3 then or no?

Took two pages, but we got somewhere. I was trying to figure out a way to salvage the existing system, but this would be the much bigger bandaid. As far as aesthetics go, there's "in the eye of the beholder" and there's "outright fugly". In the real world there is a certain set of standards of beauty, for example, with cars where one will pay a premium for the slick looking sports car because the look says it all. These standards will shift with time and culture, but are fairly consistent within the spectrum. The Greeks also defined some universal standards of beauty that are in use to this day, and your own body is wired to find certain pitches and rythms in music pleasing and others not so. Say you had two cars with identical engines under the hood, would you take the '74 Pinto Wagon body or the '99 Ferrari Testerosa body? How many would agree if put to a vote? Everything is quantifiable. Marketing exists not to manipulate you, but to manipulate the masses by selling them an aesthetically pleasing dream...and who are the masses? A lot of yous put together.

I'll summarize the hostility...nearly 2 pages of TLDR of BS arguments for anyone else that wants to jump in just to finally say "it can't be done because Bioware said so". So what? Let me waste my time writing then. Bioware has made a lot of promises as well as experiments that worked out to greater and lesser extent and kept to a greater or lesser degree. Another game did allow players to pay to change their race, er "species" at a much later date than that race was introduced and is ticking along just fine. I was hoping for a free option, paying a few bucks would be ok too. I can personally afford it to get the exact game experience I want, no problem, and at the same time I wouldn't begrudge anyone getting that option occaisionally for free. Failure or success of this game will NOT hinge on this feature if it is implemented in any form, despite promise X, Y, or Z. Please argue this. Give me some made up numbers of player base that will leave or become sore, then I'll make some numbers up, and we'll be swimming in that pool where 98% of stats are made up. Or, you could be constructive and say something like: "They could do this instead..." "We could ask for X" "Thats good, could we build on that" "Here's a different direction this could take" "I promise to quit if this is implemented in any form, you can have my stuff" "I was thinking more along the lines of this..." "One last comment before I go play bingo in the day room..."

From previous - Perhaps another solution would be that a crit on crafting returns a moddable piece of the same gear instead of a regular one. Your idea works also in about the same way, just on the RE instead of the crit. What would be the relative merits of either approach? Now we're getting somewhere constructive, I like it.

I'll just kindly go beat my head against a wall and thank God I left the games industry to be a psych nurse, at least there I can medicate what ails me Cheers m8.

I challenge you to actually track what sells in what numbers. Speaking only of orange, there's some armor, even with augs, that I can't give away, and other armor that goes within hours of posting. I wasn't wrong, I was baiting Cpt. Buzzkill in to actually agreeing with me on something. But unfortunately, its also a moot point as almost ALL lightsabers are already completely moddable save the new legacy ones and maye a quest reward or two. Your buddy, Cpt. Killjoy, didn't seem to understand that, I was addressing him, sir. My original premise said no such thing. No stats would be changed, simply that mods would be visible and would add up to the same original stats. That's great, but it doesn't address the issue of the catalogue of RE'd greens, blues, and purples that I've sunk literally millions of mats into to create that are unsellable not useful except as costume pieces for my crafting companions. I don't want to hunt down a duplicate orange recipe (though this does address half the issue), I want my gear also saleable and the economy to not look like Bush Jr. was a consultant for SWTOR.

No, you wouldn't. Play through the logic. Get human to 50, it unlocks "Human Card". Give this to Sith at 50, he uses it. Human Card is already unlocked, ergo, no second card. Situation B Pay 1.5million for "Twilek Card" Use card on Sith level 50, he uses it. Twilek is already unlocked, ergo, no second card. The card is issued when you unlock the race to use on whatever character you want, one time. I feel sorry for people that re-rolled entirely new characters to duplicate their existing one. Perhaps an achievement called "Double Jugs" with an appropriately classy codex icon would compensate them. And of course its freakin' cosmetic and not game changing, as it falls under the category of "easy fix"...little things that make life in the game a little better for some. Hard revamps would apparently make your head spin.

Pure and simple, cosmetics. The only point to any armor right now is cosmetic. As stated in the original post, some crafted non-orange pieces look pretty good actually...imperial uniforms, for example. The only reason why an endgame player buys crafted orange armor is for a particular look, given a choice between augmented pieces. The cool stuff sells better, guaranteed. Weapons are the same thing, cosmetics. Lightsabers are all little doggy fetch-sticks no matter their name, but gun users (especially snipers) love their gun looks and some are definitely cooler than others. And, BTW, dps is effected by barrel mod, not the weapon itself. Weapon range is all the same with basic attacks, you're either melee or ranged, sniper rifles and smuggler pistols shoot the same range.

So far this is bringing back a lot of fond memories, anyways... Its a card, its optional, its cosmetic. If it breaks the game for you, you wouldn't use it. Would it break the game if someone else uses it? Does gay marriage effect your straight marriage? Do penguins poop in the Amazon? From a game design point of view, programming point of view, even a story design point of view, I can unequivocally say that changing your race after the fact does not break anything retroactively unless your character data file was constructed by programming monkeys on acid. From a story design perspective, a few random comments or dialogue choices which have no effect on the next "cell" of the dialogue are NOT major. The game can currently already handle any race, sorry "species", you throw at it. Here's a question for you: what would this "Legacy Fix" ... well ... fix, exactly? What issue is it addressing? You never identified the reason why you are making this suggestion, and failed to identify any problem that would be fixed by its implementation. The issue is that my family tree, the way I want it, makes no sense. In another thread I will address the missing relationships given in your story arc (where'd my woman go?), but this one also stands out. Why would my pureblood Sith Warrior be messing around with Vette? How do we have kids? Why is my kid Twilek? Damnit, its a minor cosmetic fix for my own anal retentiveness. And would make a for a cute random loot drop off a mob boss as well. Personally, my own role-playing would be enhanced as my relationship with Vette would make more sense if I was a Twilek, for example. However, I don't want to roll a second level 50 Juggernaut when I already possess a perfectly good one. This perfectly good existing juggernaut did not receive any game play advantage from being Sith, his leveling time was identical, his ending gear and all in-between gear is theoretically identical. His self-esteem may be higher due to fewer disparaging comments he received if he weren't Twilek, but otherwise its a miniscule element of story design, with no actual game design value. So, if anyone can produce a link to where changing races would give players an advantage either in end game or leveling, I see no reason why people can't construct their Legacy dream without having to reroll. Cheers. You're the only one saying anything about "radical story changing" elements. No one else has stated this. "I(t) can entirely change the direction of aspects of your class storyline."

Well now its all they ask for. I keep about 100 items on the GTN at any given time, and orange augmented is ALL I can actually sell for a price anywhere above material cost. Perhaps now its time for a trial run. Perhaps another solution would be that a crit on crafting returns a moddable piece of the same gear instead of a regular one.

I've played everything up to 30 at least, and some to 50. Those "comments" are just flag reads. By changing your species at a later date than the start, there has been no radical effect on the Sith Inquisitor storyline, the Sith Warrior story, the Agent story, or the smuggler story that I have seen. Random be-bop commentary in or out of questline conversations is not "radical story changing". Besides the "alien scum" commentary (which you get to say playing as human in Empire questline), the only quest conversation I've seen is if you're playing the Sith race in the pure blood side-quest, you get some different conversation items. Same rewards, same number of steps, same quest game play. Besides, how does the game handle now new races introduced to the story lines? It doesn't care. Apparently a game designer's definition of "radical" is a little different than a player's.

What was the reasoning behind this, guess I'm not seeing it. Did people just hate moddable gear then for some reason? Players were only buying mods then as they were leveling instead of armor? Would that be an issue now that most players are level 50 and cosmetics uber alles? Remove the damned mod vendors then also please. Get cybertechs to work.

I would love it if every craftable piece of armor became moddable, with the ceveat that the mods couldn't be removed, only replaced.

Then leave it in for only crafted items then, as I said, I was iffy on the issue of quest loots/drops being moddable and now that question is answered. Besides, the demand for most craftable non-orange gear is now zero anyways, how could it get worse?

Yes people, its time to play the race card if your character is feeling discriminated against. The Race Card 1) Upon reaching 50th or purchasing the legacy unlock, your character will receive a bona fide "Race Card" added to his inventory. Each unlock will give you a race card of the appropriate race, ie "Race Card - Human" or "Race Card - Gungan". 2) The Race Card will be Bind to Legacy. Send it around to your relatives. 3) Playing the Race Card - This will destroy your street cred as well as the card itself, but whomever plays the race card gets immediately kicked to the character creation screen (just the last one) where racial features can be picked, edit to your heart's content. 4) Your name will remain locked in, as will gender (not to mess up story lines, etc). 5) It can be used on a toon that already is of the race in question in order to edit their features with new options or totally change their look. As far as I can tell, theres about 3 or 4 totally impertinant conversations in quests throughout the game that use race as an identifier, no flags are set by this that I can tell however. Unlike changing class or gender, this should have absolutely zero consequences on your character data file. Please Bioware, let us play the Race Card !

Ceveat: These are easy fixes that could make the game just a bit better, I do have some radical ones in mind, but for now I'll stick to the easy ones. Crafting Armormech/Synth/Armstech Since the introduction of augmentable orange gear I seem to have a near useless assortment of craftable items on my lists. The real tragedy is that the look of these items is often better than the craftable oranges. Simple solution: 1) Make ALL crafted gear moddable. Greens, blues, purples...everything. I think at one point in the beta it was at least partially like this, so it could be done again. My guess is that this is already in for most gear, just hidden. 2) The items would contain mods that total up to the original stats. 3) The catch is that the original mods cannot be removed, only overwritten. This keeps artificers and cybertechs in business as well. Mods added later could be removed at the standard cost...or not to keep the economy flowing. 4) Orange gear would continue to be mod free and be unrestricted for inserting and removing mods. 5) Recipes could be added for some quest loots in lieu of taking the actual item. Yes, its a bandaid, but an effective one. Not sure if this could also apply to quest loots and random drops, but this would have advantages and disadvantages to the crafting economy.

No, we don't. Already we have way too many items that are completely useless to craft or try to sell. Proposed solution in another thread.

I've been both a senior game designer, executive producer, and studio manager for 2 major gaming developers, including one that is an EA affiliiate. This is par for the course for EA. EA and some of its partners (lets hope not Bioware) have the bad habit of laying off anyone remotely competent and saving the ***-kissers when the time comes. Senior management in the games industry in general is incompetent to the point of absurdity, which I racked up to the fact that it was generally a young industry (no guilds, no unions, no evaluations at the end of the project). Working in the games industry for major developers is like the Groundhog's Day movie where the same mistakes get made every single project like there is some kind of collective amnesia. The subjectiveness in which both marketting and development determine their criteria for future success is also patently ridiculous sometimes. I could write a multi-volume book series with examples of this. As for people that don't like this game, I will say from my own experience that this is actually close to a bug free launch as it gets. There were some very big SNAFU's, but game-breaking bugs were almost nil. Biggest SNAFU was the arbitrary server limits imposed to try to spread people out. Those wait times in the first weeks had no bearing on reality, the servers could most definitely have held more - it was an arbitrary limit. The arbiters of that limit did have their reasons, but they couldn't anticipate the massive exodus of the player base after a few months. In hindsight, I would not have made the same call and imagine myself arguing to slowly introduce servers as thy fill to the breaking point. Its much easier to add more servers than put the genies back into smaller bottles. From a game design perspective, the stats system was entirely too dumbed down, even for casual players. This is fixable though. What keeps people busy for hours when NOT playing the game is figuring out the hundreds of ways to combine stats with their abilities and then make plans for specific gear to get those stats. In this game, none of that is meaningful. The game is like a girlfriend...if she's too easy, you lose interest. Also, ugly armor. Fire the fashion designer and hope there's a suitable place for him in the afterlife. WW2 potato-masher hand grenades stuck to my back? Really? As for those that say "this can't come now" because of different aspects of the team work on different things...true to a limited point. Management has the power to recombine the SCRUMs or whatever functional units they want at any time, then assign priorities as determined. If team pipelines are kept small and efficient, there's no reason they can't shelve what they're doing and go with another priority...except this is EA and the rule in management is that those who know what is going on are not allowed to make cost/production decisions, and vice-versa. As for the server combines, they can do it and should ASAP. My bet on the delay in this feature is setting up the billing logistics while the accountants crunch numbers to determine the strategy. They already failed at economic systems (both player base management and in-game economy) and they know it. This is their one chance to fix it and the designers/producers don't want to screw it up. EA doesn't let production teams make a move with anything that involves actual money without blessings from higher-ups that have no freaking clue what's actually going on, so sip a marguerita while you wait. I'll just be happy to take potshots from the sidelines happy that this isn't my project

Mats have found a new life now that almost all oranges are viable as sale pieces (excepting the hideously plain or ugly). Mats are also useful for crafters gearing themselves when they need that "just one more compound" to craft their next level item. As for bulk sales for making blues/purples, there's no longer a market.

Gee, lets make the market completely bottom out on what few purples we can still sell occaisionally.