I see benefits and negatives for the collections bit. One benefit here is that if you have a set of armor from cartel packs the you bought from GTN, then you can spend a lot less credits and cartel coins to supposedly unlock that for all characters on your account. So instead of spending a ton of credits or a ton of cartel coins to get another set, I can just transfer it back in and have multiple copies. I think the problem here is that the tool tips don't accurately tell you much. I have a light saber on one character and a blaster on another. If i'm on my Jedi, I can unlock the blaster for all characters but can only transfer the light saber to my character and it's bound. Another slight issue is t hat people complain about having the same item and it's bound to that character. I think that is done to keep you from posting that reclaimed item on the GTN and really messing up the economy. A better solution may be to make it account bound. That keeps the items off the GTN and makes people happy for not having to spend more cartel coins to get it for all characters. The major issue I see is that with armor sets, you have to find the whole set to be able to purchase it through collections. What if I don't like the whole set or I do but don't have all the pieces yet? Should be able to get the parts I do have through the details.

I thought these were going to be only Cartel Market items, but I'm seeing them listed on the GTN already so I'm wondering if they are craftable? if so which profession?

You people are nothing but blatant liars, cheats and scammers. You hyped the whole Rise of the Hut Cartel expansion with we'd be able to see Makeb and play Cathar. Then you drop this Customization update that is purely a money grab since everything in on the cartel market for everyone. Then I read the patch notes and check some things to see you *********** lied to everyone again. You said Cathar would be a playable race with purchase of the expansion then you make the asinine decision that it should be only available on the cartel market for everyone. It's not unlockable in any other way. I don't know if that decision was made by Bioware or by EA but maybe you people should stop spreading lies to your player base. Show some god damn integrity and be honest with the players. We're the ones paying your salaries and you treat us lit carp, spin lies about stuff and pull bone headed stunts like this. This is why some many game companies are shutting down because you don't give a damn about players. This is just another example in a slew of examples of how you don't give a damn about your players. Thanks for another patch that proved you're a bunch of liars.

Not this is just my opinion and mostly formed from my personal experience with new crafting and threads I've read here. It really feels to me like crafting has become a huge disappointment or possibly an after thought. Granted we only got one new planet and 5 levels to gain but for 50 points of crafting to gain, I kind of expected more out of it. It's starting to feel like crafting is a huge waste of credits and time. When I opened up the level 400-450 I expected to at least see orange recipes. All I got were yellows. I'm seeing people stating that a new recipe being learned for reaching the level requirement is coming in as grey and that's not right. I'm also reading that some professions are having a problem getting over around 435 and finishing out for various reasons; lack of materials, lack of recipes, combination of both. There's a thread about getting recipes that require materials from hard mode operations that drop gear belonging one tier level above the item those materials create. That shouldn't be the case. It wasn't the case when I leveled up from 1 -400 so why is it acceptable now. A lot of players look at crafting as a way to assist their character while leveling. I saw before a lot of people asking what would be a good crafting skill for character's class. With the current "new stuff" I'm not sure any crafting is good for players; at least not in it's current state or maybe not anything past 400. Crafting should be an alternate way to gear up a character. It should progress as the character progresses. As I work on a planet and get materials, I'd expect to be able to craft thing that my character can use with out much difficulty in getting materials. I'd expect to see schematics for every category in my crew skill given when unlocking level 401-450. I did artifice first and looked to see nothing but enhancements, some light sabers (which were needed) and a couple generators; no hilts and no color crystals. That's a huge letdown. While it could be Bioware's attempt to remove credits from the game it's very disappointing to people that love to craft. While talking about crafting, i would be amiss if I don't mention that the gathering and mission crew skills seem very broken, even with the new explanation from Bioware on why they did it this way. The missions should have rewards on par with the previous levels as far as what can be earned. Seeing reports from people running the one time unlock missions, spending a lot of credits to send someone on that mission and getting pretty much garbage in return for 3 hours of time is a bit uncalled for. Again, maybe Bioware is trying to take credits out of the game but I think it's very bad form. As it stands right now, it's my opinion that crafting is a huge letdown and not worth the time or credits to invest in to level it from 400 to 450. Crafting should always be seen as an alternate way to gain gear, not a sub par way to get gear you don't need, can't use or better left for an alt. Given the current state of things, I foresee the market getting flooded with mats as people believe that gathering materials is about the only viable thing to do with crew skills and that is a complete shame. I do hope Bioware addresses this but I don't think it will happen before the next expansion, if there is one.

and I get those where? if I recall, the black-blue and black-red come from hard mode op weapons. the cyan I thought was a cartel pack color and wasn't the purple one as well? Seems kind of a huge letdown that I have to find and reverse engineer them to get the schematics.

I recall reading that Artifice would be able to get a bunch of different color crystal schematics in the new content. I got my artifice able to go to 450 but all the new schematics are enhancements with a few light sabers and a shield. Where's the new hilts and color crystals? How do I get new schematics for various color crystals aside from green, blue, red and yellow?

This. If you don't do this then you're not taking the security of your player base in to account. First off, we should NOT be able to use display name at the present time. you need to turn that off now. Second, In your database, add a new column called ForumHandle. Update the registration form and user account to allow players to change that value. maybe initially default it to current user name. If you do those things and people don't go change their forum handle, then that's their fault and they didn't take it seriously. While what you want to do is sound in a way, you're still making a vulnerability by not letting us change it. In fact that's exactly what STEAM allows us to do. There's a reason you shouldn't reinvent the wheel, so take a hint from your peers.

HAHAHAHAHA!!! Have you logged in to steam lately? I'm going to assume no since this is inaccurate information. Yes Steam doesn't make you log in with your email address, however they also don't use your display name either. my Steam account is one name and my display name on the forums is completely different. NI suggest next time before you spread false information, that you do research first. On that note, since you want to remove Email addresses as the login ID, why aren't we able to use an actual user name instead of the display name? You do know that display names don't allow numbers which makes the available permutations for a name less than desirable, right?

if you honestly believe that in this circumstance, then you sir are a *******. So my display name, publicly sitting on the forums, is what I have to use to log in and that's supposed to be more secure than an email address people don't know. I call BULL ****. As an IT professional with a certification in network security, this is the last thing you should do. you NEVER give your user name or password out to people. once they know half, it's not hard to get the other half. so NO Bioware/EA. This does NOT enhance security. The only thing I could hope for is it's an April Fools joke. If they honestly implement that, I'm done playing becuase it's a security violation to have usernames sitting out in public.

Glad to see a Bioware post but I think you missed the problem here. The reason the GTN performs poorly is because you search it for each word input instead of just the entire string. If I put in Major Experience Boost, I should get Major Warzone Experience Boost. That's not what I was searching for. So to fix that you thought it was a good idea to make it so each word MUST contain 3 characters (alpha/numeric). well you once again proved you have no clue what your doing because no we can't serch for specific armoring, mods, enhancements, or hilts because most of those have 2 numbers in them at the end. so when people are looking for say Armoring 27 or guardian hilt 22 they can't search it. Now on top of that your "hotfix" today doesn't even address that at all. do you even listen to players like you claim to be since everyone was complaining about this and the repair costs the most yet you didn't bother to address it. I don't think you actually care about players anymore, but if you still do you have a very distorted and funny way of showing it.

actually you're wrong here. I've done rep grinds in other games, WoW in particular. only recently have they tried to make it equal. For three expansions in that game you get somethings that was beneficial to use from grinding a rep out. it wasn't just cosemetic armor. that stuff was considered Best In Slot or good item to get you into the raiding groups usually for certain classes. They had enchants you can use that better your character and for crafters something they could make. Based on that, This rep grind is stupid and a waste.

No that type of behavior isn't ok. it's unacceptable and those are the kind of people that need banned from this game. Unfortunately nothing will happen to them and this behavior will continue because these people don't care. too bad we can't remove them permanently from the game. they're probably starved for content and thus acting like d-bag carl. however that's not an excuse to act like that.

Here's a thought. STOP GRABBING THE PVP QUEST. If you don't want to be killed outside warzones. don't flag up, don't grab the PvP quest, don't go to the PvP zone. It's that simple. What people are doing killing you isn't against the rules. you're flagged and fair game. don't want to be killed by other players, stop flagging.

I have to agree with the OP here. really what the heck was the point of the rep system. the only thing I see that MIGHT be worth it is the weapons. Beyond that nothing. so lets review what you get. Gree: Weapons and Tron looking armor Voss: set of Voss Mystic armor Section X rep: Set of armor to make you look like a Trooper/Bounter in black Heroic Space Mission rep: Armor that looks like it belongs on a smuggler/ agent. So that's it. the only thing worth while here is the damn weapons. nothing else. and you only gain rep for 2 weeks then you have to wait till it comes back to continue gain. honestly I hope they add more things because right now this little hand out for content sucks

This is meant as constructive criticism and a place to gather thoughts from everyone as a whole. I've been playing the game since launch and still paying for a subscription. Before the launch of Free to Play, many of the patches actually addressed bugs and problems in the game. A lot of things got fixed. Some thing were broken then corrected with a hot fix or the following weeks patch. All in all, I think things were headed in a very good direction. Then comes free to play and cartel market. Now all the patches seem to mainly address Cartel market stuff. Adding new things. removing other things. fixing bugs with items so they can be sold on the GTN. All things meant to be part of their supposed new money maker. I think this is a misguided use of talented people. It doesn't matter how much stuff you put on the market for Cartel Coins. It doesn't matter what is happening there at all. My opinion is this: the supposed new money maker isn't going to make you money if your game's broken. While the market is nice I think talent is being wasted in making new items for the market. honestly, that talent should be working toward fixing glaring bugs with the game because that is what will keep people playing. That will keep free to play people spending money on your market. I really expected a lot more out of a 5 hour maintenance window for a "large patch" that doesn't address bugs players are having in the game. It's feels like the attitude is "Distract them with Cartel Market items and they won't see the major problems." That to me feels wrong.

There was an example provided for you but not a good one. here's a good one that actually happened. Purchase cartel coins on market. got my coins and thought everything was fine. What EA decided to do was bill my bank account TWICE of a single transaction. Had to call customer service because that's illegal. They said the bank should have ignored the second claim and it should come off my account, thereby releasing the funds.

Just did the heroic mission I got on my ship today. just over 7K credits for the reward, 2 black hole comms, fleet and daily comms. This was to be expected. The mission complete for that mission: 538 credits. ***?? I thought it was lowered to 1616 credits and I'm getting less than half that????? BIOWARE: Before you tweak things, how about actually TESTING it first. This is a failure

I figured that was what they meant by it with the reduction in credits. it's probably still a good chunk if you get the heroic quest. I'd honestly prefer they actually work on bugs and stop the fancy market crap. Three weeks with no update to teh game and all we get is a bunch of cartel market stuff is pretty sad. how can they (Bioware/EA) expect people to sub to a game they ccan't bother updating important things. I get it was a holiday period but still people have been complaining about not getting the heroic space mission quests every day or even at all when they launched. I only hope they get it fixed next week because it's annoying.

So I look over the patch notes today and see the following Ok so Bioware reduces the cost of the Grade 7 items from the in game vendor. probably needed. Bioware reduced the credit reward to 1,616. it's a heroic level 50 zone and the reward is reduced to 1616? that's not even on par with the green con quests you can do at 50 for daily coms and credits. ok maybe that's just running the space mission with out the actual heroic quest. So I check on my 50 that is eligible for all of the heroic space missions having completed them all once yet still only able to get 2 a week. being that this is wednesday, I have the space station heroic space mission; one that I've gotten before. the double one on sunday I've gotten too. I'll have to wait till tomorrow to see if I get a new one. So Bioware tweaks the Space missions but doesn't actually address the major complaint that most of the people that have cleared them all once are either not getting them at all or not getting one a day like we're supposed to. Can you please actually work on BUGS instead of tweaks and cartel market items

Well the problem with that is this. i've beaten all of them. I got a black hole comm mission at my ship on friday 12/14 and again on sunday 12/16. It's been 48 hours with a server reset and I still don't have anything new. I call BULL **** BIOWARE. how can they provide new heroic space missions and have it STILL screwedup. Remind me why am I paying them 15 dollars a month again?

I haven't tried queuing up for SM ops yet. I'm a Tank though and I main tank for my guild in ops. I have to say I've been in that situation in WoW many times as a healer, DPS and Tank (on three different characters). That seems to be a common trait though about queuing. I'm not sure many people take the time to look for a few strats online. Google is your friend and that's how we found the strats for the op fights. Kudos to you for sticking it out that long and trying to help people out. I get the feeling that those people weren't willing to read the chat window. honestly, I put party and ops cchats in a separate tab so I can see the directions and not all the spam.

When I said that, I have spent 4 days and several hours on those two missions alone trying to get past them and having so many issues. I realize now that I've done them all those are pretty decent for rewards. They are challenging but very doable. I've been able to complete them all. My only complaint is that I don't get quests to complete more than 1 of those new six missions and that quest is the one that rewards black hole comms. Why aren't we getting them grouped like the other missions for rewards. seems rather stupid to me that we don't get to do these more than once a day and it's only 1 mission when Bioware added 6.

On the first part I completely agree. I've said this in that other game which won't be mentioned because it happened for the last 4 years. Over there, people would kick you if you weren't putting out what they believed to be enough DPS. I've been kicked from groups as a tank and a healer because some pompous ******e was in a hurry. I've said that all bosses should be required. It should be required. Problem is I don't think that is going to change. On your second part, I'd just start blacklisting these people. put them on ignore and the group finder shouldn't pull them into the group with you. You could possibly report them but I don't know if that would do any good. Maybe a vote kick would work. Yesterday I got put in a group replacing the tank that just dropped on the next to last boss for battle of ilum. The healer had under 10K so I thought it was a fresh 50. We end up skipping that boss even though we did very well for the first attempt with me there. We get to the final boss. I drop the repair bot and then the healers health jumps to 13K. Apparently person needed a repair but looked more inline with a fresh 50 with some gear to me. seemed odd to skip a boss though. Healer got pummeled by crystal throw in every attempt. That fight is hard for fresh 50s. I didn't mind skipping the boss because they apparently tried it enough that the previous tank left. I felt bad the healer kept dieing and she left the group. We ended up getting Consular token she could have used, i think. The problem is I think people forget where they came from and that those things used to be hard for them as well. They look for the quick rewards and honestly those are the ones we need to get rid of, in my opinion. I'm all for skipping a bunch of trash if you can but skipping a boss because we aren't "going fast enough for you" isn't right. If you don't have the time to do the flashpoint or operation, don't queue up. You're only pissing off people you need to get that flashpoint done. We don't have 10 million players so these people acting like D-bag Carl is going to limit their experience

Lets see here. I know people that have problems with the space missions that were already in place and refused to do them. Personally I love the missions. I was able to complete two of the new missions. I've tried all 6 and only able to complete 4. Thanium Disruption: how the hell are you supposed to even complete this. I've gotten blown up by the tunnel of mines and figured out that I needed to blow both cooldowns. then I get grinded against an asteroid with almost no room to avoid it. hell I can't even get to the end. Baros Ambush: i've gotten blown up many times. I finally make it to the end and fail because I can't blow up the damn bridge and why? the turns where it's available are so quick I lose lock. when I'm finally able to get a lock, I find out it take not 1 but 2 proton torpedoes to destroy it. ***? when am I supposed to lock on the first one? Of the four I was able to complete, they felt like a good challenge and doable. I found those enjoyable. I like the space missions a lot. I was doing all of them while leveling up and was even progressing through the level 50 ones with only the level 5 upgrades. they were challenging but definitely doable. Two of the new ones don't feel like they are very doable for the most part. I'm going to guess that those two are part of a group where I get black hole coms. Since I'm having a problem at the moment, they don't seem like a real good investment for me. 2 black hole coms from 1 mission and some credits for a challange. Hell, why don't I just do hard modes and dailies. get more reward out of those so far.

First, it's heroic 4, you need 4 people or 2 players with good control over the companions and well kept companions. I'll admit that for the most part when I get the heroic 2, 2+ and 4 quests, I untrack them because maybe I don't want to do them. However recently I've been seeing a lot of people asking in general for others doing those missions. That's usually when I join up and get them done. I would expect to see that happen more often with the influx of F2P because they don't get rested xp but we may not. I'd suggest keeping an eye on the planets general channel when you are looking to do those. I do agree with your last statement though. The rewards from a heroic 4 should be significantly greater than that of a heroic 2 or 2+