It appears this suggestion (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=326033&highlight=numpad+quickslot) was taken to heart. But without proper consideration for all the use cases involved. For one of my quickbars, my keybindings are all ctrl+<some numpad key>. After his patch, *all* of them are shown with the text of "c+Num". So an attempt to visually distinguish between multiple pairs of keys has instead caused all numpad keys used with any one modifier to be visually indistinguishable from each other. Nice attempt to improve things that instead makes the situation worse. Since the problem seems to be caused by a lack of space for the full text, might I suggest that instead of displaying the string "Num 1", as suggested in the above link, that you use "N1" instead?

Yes, well, while it's easy to come up with work arounds, it doesn't change the fact that it's a bad and likely buggy mechanic.

Here are more specifics regarding situation 2: The Fungal Breeder spawned next to me while I was looking at a pub player that had just walked up. I had death field prekeyed, so I *immediately* clicked near the Breeder, which aggro'd it to me, causing it to turn to me, then Khem as he grabbed aggro from me. Death field opens with instant damage, so at this point I undeniably tagged the mob, given the way tagging is supposed to work anyway. As I the placed my dots on the breeder I noticed the pub player (unflagged btw, in case it matters for the devs) close in and open up with his DPS. This caused the breeder to die quite quickly compared to what I was used to when taking them down solo - which is why I explained my gearing in the initial post. Since my suspicions were already primed by the events with my alts, I explicitly noted that the Breeder *stayed* red to me the entire fight while also doing my normal attack sequence. Yet when the mob died, the pub player looted the breeder and I didn't get credit (I know because I was tracking the relevant achievement). It is simply not possible for the conventional understanding of tagging to explain this sequence of events. It also seems impossible for lag to explain this, as the sequence of events was otherwise fully consistent.

Then I see that my description of events was not sufficiently clear. In situation 2, your comment clearly doesn't apply and I fail to see how my description thereof could be misunderstood by any competent reader. In situation 1 I was attempting to explicitly describe a different form of what appeared to be the same case, but I did not intend to exclude situation 2 from the sequence of events experienced by those alts - my bad. There were some fights where my mid-level alts would tag all the adds and yet still lose the kill credit to a 55 that had not yet engaged by the time of my tagging. To put it another way, when on my alts I first assumed it was because of lack of tagging, but tagging the adds first to address the issue made no discernible difference.

I've opened a ticket for this bug, but in a necessarily very abbreviated form. Short form: During this event it became clear to me that many players are aware of a kill stealing mechanic *and* taking advantage of it. Situation 1: One of my mid-level alts tags one of the rakghoul event mobs (infected <foo> or rakghoul, doesn't matter) - starts DPSing while the level appropriate adds spawn - kills first mob only to find some nearby 55 has engaged the adds and usually kills them quite quickly (depending on the level of my alt). Said 55 gets sole credit for the kills. It happened so often for my mid-20 level alt that he barely got any adds killed - this was *very* annoying. Situation 2: My main, a level 55 who I have played so sporadically since before the Hutt Cartel came out that she is still only partially geared in Basic level gear, tagged a Fungal Breeder. During the fight, a nearby player (not grouped) went all out DPSing, even tho' I had not asked for help. The mob's nameplate was red to me the whole fight (in which I was fully engaged, just to be clear), yet I did not get credit for the kill and the other player looted it. Initially I wasn't even sure this was a bug, but my search efforts found only references confirming my understanding that tagging the mob is sufficient to ensure kill credit. From situation 2, this is clearly not the case. My *guess* now is that total DPS is the deciding factor, but I really have little info to work with. As to situation 1 - if the mobs are specifically *spawned* for a particular character/group, why allow anyone else to get credit at all, especially as they despawn if the players disengage from the fight?

Since part of the issue is that lumping hides the magnitude of the work done & changes made, I suggest that you include a counter. So perhaps say, "Fixed 2+ environmental issues on Ilum" or "Corrected a total of 15+ clipping issues on Tatooine, Belsavis, Balmorra, and Coruscant." The "+" gives you leeway to not be pedantically correct while still sharing the magnitude of the effort and changes made.

(This is also a repost, sent to the wrong forum initially) To add some specific details that may actually aid in fixing this... I use my mouse wheel to zoom the camera in and out (likely not relevant to the behavior), and I can tell from careful movement of the wheel that the camera's zoom distance moves in small steps. When I initially log in, and whenever I change areas, the camera is always zoomed to a particular distance, which I've learned to recognize exactly due to the relative position of my feet compared to my quickbars. My preferred zoom distance is actually just one step farther out from that default. The interesting bit is that when I move my mouse wheel just enough to zoom one step out, the camera actually jumps two steps - as if the game thought it was at the right distance already. So to position my camera as I prefer, I have to move my mouse wheel to zoom one step out and then one step in. Further adding to the annoyance is the behavior that results from taxi rides. Some destinations (like the western imperial stop in Ilum's PvE area) nearly always place my camera zoomed all the way out, instead of the usual default distance. And again the behavior seems to be that zooming in a single step positions the camera as if I had moved it one step in from the distance it was at before the taxi ride, so I have to change my zoom distance twice (once in and once out) to set it correctly. In short, the camera distance that gets used is often, from the player's perspective, an arbitrary default, while the client itself thinks that the camera is at some other distance, which then gets used as the basis for however the player adjusts the camera zoom. This is an independent issue to the angle of the camera also getting reset when entering a new area, which perhaps is a design flaw instead of a bug because it appears there's no support for that actually being saved.

To add some specific details that may actually aid in fixing this... I use my mouse wheel to zoom the camera in and out (likely not relevant to the behavior), and I can tell from careful movement of the wheel that the camera's zoom distance moves in small steps. When I initially log in, and whenever I change areas, the camera is always zoomed to a particular distance, which I've learned to recognize exactly due to the relative position of my feet with my quickbars. My preferred zoom distance is actually just one step farther out from that default. The interesting bit is that when I move my mouse wheel just enough to zoom one step out, the camera actually jumps two steps - as if the game thought it was at the right distance already. So to position my camera as I prefer, I have to move my mouse wheel to zoom one step out and then one step in. Further adding to the annoyance is the behavior that results from taxi rides. Some destinations (like the western imperial stop in Ilum's PvE area) nearly always place my camera zoomed all the way out, instead of the usual default distance. And again the behavior seems to be that zooming in a single step positions the camera as if I had moved it one step in from the distance it was at before the taxi ride, so I have to change my zoom distance twice (once in and once out) to set it correctly. In short, the camera distance that gets used is often, from the player's perspective, an arbitrary default, while the client itself thinks that the camera is at some other distance, which then gets used as the basis for however the player adjusts the camera zoom. This is an independent issue to the angle of the camera also getting reset when entering a new area, which perhaps is a design flaw instead of a bug because it appears there's no support for that actually being saved.

Um, do you folks realize that the SMTP e-mail system was not designed to deliver mail instantly? It was designed with a built-in buffer between hops, in case any intermediate server was temporarily down. It was designed to get the mail there eventually, if at all possible, and when it's most convenient, which usually is "right away", but could equally well be, "only in the middle of the night". The fact that, most of the time, our e-mail arrives effectively instantly is not something that can be relied upon, even if we all want it. This issue doesn't affect me in the least, but I still find myself annoyed by the design of it.

So, from a story perspective, why would an imperial player want to stop what the Dread Masters are doing?

Oh, and one more: 18) I can't easily distinguish my buffs/debuffs from those of the rest of the party so, for example, I can't tell whether the Affliction currently in effect on a mob is mine, or another sorc's in my party.

Some of the papercuts that I have, in no particular order, are from: 1) On the map, selecting to show Vendors works great, but other frequently useful things like Mail or Cargo don't. 2) Needing to remember that "this crafting mat" is "lvl <foo> and type <bar>" in order to then find a suitable mission that might yield that mat. 3) The camera position and distance get reset when changing planets, entering/leaving FPs and taking taxis (and for taxi's about half the time the distance is far away instead of close, depending on where one arrives). 4) I can't see the difference between repeatable missions and non-repeatable from the floating icons. 5) The stories for repeatable missions don't make sense for being repeatable. 6) I have four chat tabs open in three windows - shift-clicking to link something always puts the link in one particular chat window, but it's usually not the same as the one I'm already typing into. 7) Escalated bug reports (which is to say, all of them) always end up with the "we'll look into it and you won't hear from us about it again" message - it's demoralizing. 8) Clicking on a crew skill that I've dragged to a quickslot opens the appropriate skill window, but the drop menus for for companion are empty (or say "null") and for mission level are truncated to the last level used, unless I've recently opened the crew skill window (I reported this as a bug months ago, but from the lack of attention it got, I guess it's not considered a bug). 9) I can go from riding my speeder to stealthed in one click/keypress, but not vice-versa (or maybe it's the other way around, I forget and can't check right now) 10) Opening a ticket closes all other UI windows, which is painful when trying to report an issue that requires referring to info only visible in some other window like, for example, map coordinates or an item description. 11) The character screen drop menus for stats don't intelligently choose which two to show for the given character/companion, for example, Melee is the default choice, but never makes sense for my sorcerer. 12) The character clothing preview window doesn't support color-matching. 13) When I send a mail message, the mail window changes back to showing the inbox, when I'm very much more likely to either be done or have another e-mail to send. 14) The crew skill window is poorly designed in that so much space is wasted to show me that my idle companions are, in fact, idle - with the result that it creates a bias towards using the companions listed at the top 'cause I have to scroll to see the lower two. Using small icons next to each companion portrait and only using the space of a progress bar in a separate area when the companion is actually busy would make that window much quicker to use. 15) I have rarely read the mission descriptions so, for me, they waste space in the mission window, forcing the window to be scrolled to see all the missions available. Maybe show a full description on mouseover, but keep it short enough in the window that scrolling is never needed to select a mission. 16) Selecting a mission and then a companion scrolls the mission window back to the top, possibly hiding the mission selected (addressing #15 makes this one not an issue). 17) My alts are not completion options when addressing a mail message, unless they are in the same guild or I've added them to my friends list.

A boon would be that if I click (or right-click) on a crafting material that I *could* get from a crew mission, the available missions that *might* give that material become listed in the mission window.

Not only will they give it away for free, but all of the high end content that they expect us to pay for has stories that contradict the repeatable nature of the content. So the folks paying for it get conditioned to ignore the story as it just doesn't matter to the game play.

1) A Clear button that empties *just* the tab it's associated with. 2) Put party/ops need/greed loot choices into a separate chat category. I forget whether they're part of party/ops info, or party/ops chat currently, but either way, after a boss kill, they swamp the rest of the chat window, making it hard to find the messages I actually find interesting.

Searching for this option surprises me with no results, so here's an idea: Not only allow for the player to say whether their headgear is displayed but also whether their hood is up or down. And do the same for the companion. I was quite annoyed when a patch made Xalek's hood come down on the beautiful, purple robe I'd chosen for him, thus showing his plain, tan hood. And I'm perpetually annoyed by seeing Kaliyo's headgear as it hides most of her face, making pointless the customization I have for her. If you want to go for broke, you could make the headgear appear (or hood go up) at the start of combat for that extra immersion by conveying the notion of "gotta get my helmet on 'cause I'm fighting now".

A couple of times now, I've been tripped up by the way you handle your patch notes. Specifically, the fact that you edit them after the patch is released to reflect what you think they should have said initially. I regularly read the patch notes right after the patch happens, before most of the edits & corrections occur, and it is not easy on my end to track what changes then get made, even with me also regularly reading the dev tracker. My suggestion is that instead of simply editing the patch notes to correct them, thus burying within them the corrected details, that patch notes have an addendum/correction section, at least until you can improve your system so that patch notes are accurate at patch time. That way, if I want to review a patch note I've previously read, I can easily find what you've changed from when I first read it.

My take on the effectiveness of a story hook is partly what the OP said. The fact that Darth Malgus is PRed to a high level and yet killed in an early FP by being thrown off a ledge is a big let down. That tougher FPs have unheard of bosses with little emotional buildup (PR) before finding them and killing them means they are just loot runs. But also other story mistakes. Most prominently that the repeatable quests (dailies and heroics that is) are storied as if you do them once and you're done. Once you go to do any of them a second time, the story becomes meaningless as a result. This trains me to ignore the story completely just to get to the options that matter (if any do). Which means that, when I then encounter a quest I haven't done yet, I get impatient at the story details that I've learned won't matter - even when it's a class story quest for an alt where it actually does matter (sort of, maybe). Come on, if it's repeatable, give a story justification for why I have to do it again!! Another story mistake is that, other than the class quest and FPs, every quest involves just the planet it's on and just the local area. Come on, this is a galactic conflict we're in. Surely there's got to be someone on Nar Shaddaa or Corellia that needs something acquired from (or someone killed on) Balmorra or Dromund Kaas or Voss, and only asks the player to do it because of <something other than just "you look powerful, help me">. The recent event was an improvement, but it still suffered from many flaws where the story didn't match the quests: news announcements proclaiming "stay away from Tatooine", but effectively nothing that impeded getting to Tatooine or, more importantly, leaving (like not being able to use a fleet pass if infected, for example); daily missions that only became available the day after doing some other daily, but no story justification for the delay or progress; a quest to infect 10 others without a quest giver who actually seeks such an outcome (a quest giver for this who would only talk to you if you were sick would have been perfect); a "vaccine" that cured you too. I could go on. I think it would be wonderful if some quests could only be found after reading something about it on a news terminal, for example. The fun I have in this game largely comes from playing with others, friends and strangers alike. But the only reason to *do* anything in this game is to acquire things and the stories, as written, just get in the way. And acquiring virtual stuff isn't really a draw for me. As things now stand, my guildies and the as yet unfinished class story lines are the only things keeping me in the game - and many of my guildies are leaving. TL;DR As long as the story for a quest reinforces ignoring the story, the story won't matter. Make the story and responses matter - off the cuff example: a daily quest where one option opens up one FP and another opens a different FP, but you can't have both open at once (yes, it would be less convenient, but story immersion is really the only way to keep the story relevant). As it stands now, Bioware is using story like giftwrap - it looks good when you get it, but everyone quickly tears through it and throws it away.

I completely, vehemently agree. I have just the look I want for my Sorc, but there's no way currently to craft it at custom quality with augments. Every craftable Light Armor custom chest piece that I've found so far looks like garbage to me, and only one is even my desired color. I refuse to sacrifice appearance for stats (I am on an RP server, after all :-) ).

First and foremost, I'd like to point out that many issues I have with the UI can be attributed to failing to understand the difference between making it possible to do something, and making it easy and intuitive. 1) When rearranging the UI, if I have a group of elements in a specific, desirable pattern, but then find that I want to move the group as a whole for some reason, I have to move each part in isolation and try to recreate the original pattern. This is unnecessarily tedious. Some way to select a group of elements (an area drag *won't* cut it given the arbitrary nature of overlaps) for movement would be ideal. 2) 1.2 introduced seemingly continuous camera distance settings, which is great for better control in getting to a specific, desirable distance, but horrible for staying there (given that the game changes the camera distance in some cases) and/or returning to it. Please add a setting for 1 or more user defined camera positions that can be reached by a keybinding. 3) The crafting UI is barely sufficient. If I want to send crew on missions, it's usually because I'm in need of particular components. So needing to reopen the window to click through most of the choices to get back to where I can select another mission like the last one is *very* common. And if I'm trying to get materials for a specific recipe, I have to remember the grade and type while I change to the mission window and, regardless of how good my memory is, I have sometimes sent crew on the wrong missions. It would be *wonderful* if I could click on a material listed for a recipe and have the mission window appear (assuming I know the appropriate skill) highlighting just those missions that might return the material desired. 4) Some way to save and load keybindings between characters. 5) When previewing a gear item or companion customization, the window that appears shows the new appearance in low resolution in a small window. This doesn't allow for seeing what the gear looks like with and without color matching, and for companions it means that differences in the face (even non-subtle changes like tattoos) are nearly invisible. As a result, the only way to truly see what a new item looks like is to acquire it, which means the preview window is not effective. Please allow for zooming in (and not just on the face, maybe I'm looking at new gloves) and toggling whether color matching is present (for the new item, not in general). 6) Sometimes if I'm looking at several pieces of gear, I loose track of which pieces are shown vs. what's worn. A button that reverts the character shown to current gear would be nice. Bonus: highlighting/listing in the window which gear is being previewed. 7) Move the reset button on the GTN window away from the search button and give it its name back. The icon looks too similar to the one used for filtering in the old arrangement, and having a button that erases *all* the settings that close to the button that uses the settings invites mistakes. 8) The crew window is not large enough to list all the companions without scrolling, which makes it tedious to use those listed lower for any purpose. This makes no sense since the point of the variety of crew attributes is to encourage the player's freedom of choice for the current activity. Most of the space for each companion seems to be wasted with status info that is only used when they are working crew skills. I suggest a different layout that shows in the companion area all six companions and their buttons (maybe in a 2x3 or 3x2 layout?) and then *below that* the progress status of any companions actively working on crew skills. 9) Stop removing the crew skills from the hotbars for whatever reasons. 10) This problem has a mentioned solution, but it's not intuitive. If I decide to check the GTN for crafting materials to make some items, the only way I've found to simultaneously have open the crafting recipe list is if I first put the crafting skill on the hotbar. This is because opening the GTN first also opens the inventory, which force closes the recipe window, and using the crew skill window to get at the recipes force closes the GTN. The only solution that comes to my mind that feels intuitive is somehow allowing one click access to the recipe window (and/or all crew skills) without relying on the character having the forethought and space available to put them in the hotbars. It's probably not the best tho'. 11) On the hotbars, I have many slots bound to keys on my numpad, which normallyI use for just that - easily entering numbers. Yet the hotbars show the function names for the keys, which I am not familiar with and never use. Which means I can't look at a slot bound to a numpad key and know which key I have to press to use it - that defeats the purpose of showing the keybinding in the first place. Can you show the numpad keys as perhaps "N0" - "N9" (and don't forget "N."), perhaps as a preference toggle so those familiar with the names are still happy? [Edit: ok, just discovered this issue is partly due to my not being familiar with the use of "Numlock" in Windoze, which I only run in VMWare to play TOR.] There are probably other annoyances, but these are the ones that quickly come to mind as I encounter them very often. The sheer number of these annoyances has, in my mind, the game teetering on the border between fun gameplay and tedious work.

While I enjoyed many parts of the event, there were three aspects that were annoying. 1) Several daily quests seemed to only became available after you'd been taking part for the appropriate number of days. RL kept me from starting my participation in the event until about 4 days after it started, and I quickly learned that it was no longer possible to work to where I could get the last daily quest. Thus I lost much interest in the event, because part of it had ended for me already. I would have preferred missing it entirely to learning I could still *sort of* take part. 2) The plaguebearer quest involved being around uninfected others at an unpredictable time. So, the only way to complete it with confidence involved deliberately *waiting* around with other players, until enough cycles of infection and dying finished the quest. And on at least two occasions I spent more than an hour waiting (on the fleet, without traveling) before I got to the second stage (and that only happened after I logged-in the second time after I'd given up on finishing it). So this was almost too tedious to finish once. 3) The only item from the jawa that I found desirable was *one* of the companion customizations. Since they were BOP and completely randomly obtained *after* purchase, I couldn't be sure of getting the *one* I wanted no matter how much effort I made, or money I spent. The easiest way would have been to repeatedly buy samples and to buy the kits until I happened to buy the customization I wanted. I decided it wasn't worth it. And a general complaint, related to this event and other daily quests. If a quest is to be repeatable, then please write it a story such that it makes sense to need to do it more than once. Otherwise the story part of the quest encourages *not* repeating it and repeating it encourages *tuning out* the story.

Since the poll is locked, and the choices don't match my opinion - here's my opinion of them: The marked increase in brightness makes it easy to see how the cooldown for any and every quickslot is proceeding, but at the expense of being such a contrast that it makes it harder to distinguish the images in each quickslot. This means that it's harder to tell the cooldown state of a particular desired ability, because it takes more effort to be sure I'm looking at the right one. Thus I don't like the change.

I'm amazed at the number of my guildies who are basing their gear choices on appearance. I'm one of them. Some of us have observed outfits on NPCs that we want for ourselves. Given our focus on long term appearance, we are collectively almost completely ignoring non-orange gear, because no matter how good it looks, we eventually out-level it when out in the world questing. Granted this issue will change character some once we settle into level 50, but I suspect for many of us that if a new item with improved stats drops that looks *ugly*, we wouldn't want it, or we would only wear it for the hard raids. So my question is this: are there any plans to eventually enable some method, however arduous, that allows a crafter to match/transfer one item's appearance (not just color) with/to another item's attributes?

True, and I have professed ignorance regarding the high end gear. To answer your question tho', what causes me to choose a store in real life is partly based on style, and this is especially important for clothes. This is why I think if RE'ing could be coupled with making a desired style useful later, there would be a huge benefit to the economy of the game. Edit: Imagine, the art team could focus on varied styles for all levels of gear, knowing that if players put in the effort, those styles would still make an appearance on top end players who preferred that look.

Since it's predicability that you desire, the fix you say is your favorite part actually fails to help. I too want more predictability from RE'ing, and your description of how to attain it (as well as a suggestion made by another poster a few pages back) are definitely improvements. But, at least for the RE'ing as levelling up (and I've already maxed my crafting skill), I think the RE chance is better than it needs to be. Edit (again): I'm currently in training to be a teacher. A point emphasized early on is that for rewards to be effective, they need to be consistent rewards based on progressive effort. Random rewards are ultimately discouraging to those who randomly fail to achieve them.