As an artifice crafter myself, I think this is AWESOME! I want to get a purple saber, and the easier that is to achieve the better. Now, the ones that crafters can produce can have better stats, like maybe the vendor ones are blue or even green quality versions while the crafted ones go up to purple, but I am totally, 120% behind these being available on vendors for at the very least cosmetic purposes.

When will we be getting an appearance tab or some system that allows us to change our graphical appearance that isn't tied to the gear we have equipped?* *(orange gear obviously being inadequate to this task)

I enjoy space combat, and my Cybertech character has outfitted himself and my other characters with the blue gear, which is WAY better than comperable leveled green gear. My level 23 characters, thus equipped, are decimating the missions at that level in a way that my green-geared main never did. That said, more options are always nice, a wider range of ship-craftable gear would be cool, especially in the form of pieces that actually shift your power balance, like being able to choose to have guns that can pierce shields, in exchange for doing less standard damage, or something like that. Or "power missiles" that take out shielded targets with less of them, but you only get half as many of them as you would standard missiles at that level. Maybe an "evasive maneuvers" package that enhances your defenses while rolling. There are all sorts of fun options.

Yes, but you're ignoring other completely canonical sources (even more canonical than JK, technically) in which pure light-side Jedi use object throwing constantly, so your one source is trumped by several other sources. Jedi Knight classified them as dark side attacks because in that game they were, but in the larger SW universe, they are not. Here, Shaak-ti uses TK throw, without a hint of yellow eyes, at around 3:25. Also, there's this video, which is silly, but also shows Shaak-ti using TK to throw an arm at one droid, and then pick up another droid and slam him into another one.

When can we expect to see the addition of some sort of appearance tab system so that our character's appearance won't be locked into the stat-gear they have equipped?

But my point is, as depicted in the sources, Force Push is not, and cannot be an impact event. It is not slamming into the target with a "wad of Force" and launching them as a result of that impact. If that were the case it would be a VERY powerful impact, it would be hitting the target with a bus. They would not be getting up from that. Even a simple Force Push capable of launching a target several meters, if it were the result of a single instantaneous impact event, would be more impacting force than a human body could survive. It would be the strongest attack in the game by far, even at level 1 it would out-damage level 50 attacks. I do not believe it is possible to "fire a wad of Force" at a target, or at least, if it is possible, it would be very difficult, and very un-Jedi-like because it would be one of the most direct applications of the Force in an offensive manner out there. Rather, what is happening with a Force Push is an application of telekinesis. You aren't firing a wad of Force at the target and letting it hit like a cannonball, you are placing your grasp of the force, like an open palm, up against the target, and then shoving them forwards, pushing them off their feet not as if hitting them with a strong punch or kick, but as if using a judo throw or a sumo shove. The force is carried over a half-second or so of contact rather than a single instant, and the target suffers no direct damage from the application of the Force TK itself, but taking the fall, or resisting that force applied, can certainly put a strain on the body. Using Force Push is no different than using Project directly on the enemy, it's just a less controlled action, since you don't need to aim them. There is no evidence whatsoever that Jedi are capable of impacting enemies directly with the Force as a hammer, rather than using it as a grasping tool that is capable of lifting, pulling, pushing, or crushing objects.

Again, it all comes down to the impulse. If the force is enough to instantaneous;y launch a target several meters based on a single impact, then yes, the amount of damage it would do is considerable, but at the same time I could push you back several meters and not do any damage to you until you hit the ground, it all just depends on the duration of the force applied. Go back to the example of the egg and the baseball players, you can throw an egg at 90mph using a pitching motion and not break it (until it hits something) or you can hit it with a bat with enough force to launch it at 90mph, but would shatter it in the process because that force is delivered in a single instant rather than over the half-second acceleration of the throw. You're totally right in that a "single impact" force push capable of launching an opponent several meters would deal massive damage, but by being correct at that smaller point you're actually arguing against your larger point, in that if Jedi were using single impact force pushes then it would be dealing massive damage, and a Force Push alone would instantly kill most enemies. It'd be like hitting them with a bus! Since they don't explode in a shower of blood when hit, we have to assume that Force Pushes in this game are not single impact, and are instead more like a pitching motion, a gentle lift and throw rather than a punch. And yet both are true. They're obvious facts. Earth Firearms do significantly more damage than Blasters do. Have you ever seen a blaster bolt create a six inch exit wound? Can an Old Republic Sniper hit a target from a mile away? Blasters have certain advantages, they don't need ammo, for one thing, but while they are certainly "fancier" than an M-16, in purely practical terms they're clearly inferior. /second. Yes, but the point is, catapults aren't used because we now have artillery cannons, but Jedi are man portable catapults. They're catapults that aren't the size of small buildings. If you want to argue that an artillery ion cannon can do more damage than Project, I'm right there with you, you'd need to lob a rock the size of a small house to do as much damage as an ion cannon, but that isn't the point, the point is that lobbing a Project-sized rock at an enemy can do more damage than what a handheld blaster is capable of, and WAY more than lobbing thin air at the target. We can extrapolate the type of damage it deals based upon observable effects. People get hit by blasters in the movies and other SW lore, from that we can determine how big an effect they have. Based on the sort of damage they do, a standard blaster bolt seems roughly equivalent to getting hit by a .22 round or so. Yes, but it is still a throw, it's still moving the target backwards, not harming him where he stands. No Jedi in the movies just "harms" a target using a direct force attack, instead they launch them around. The targets of a Force Push do no seem to feel any pain or suffer any damage from the launching effect, and if the FP was an impact event they would take VERY noticeable damage from them, like "blood splatter"damage, because the forces involved would be significant. And how many Jedi use Hadouken in the movies? Again, if you want to insist that Jedi should not have Project because Sith use the ability in the movies, then that argument would have to extend to mean that NO abilities should be available to Consulars that would have comparable effects to the existing ones. By that standard, Consulars would have to become an entirely CC-based set with practically no direct damage options. If you accept that for balance reasons they had to design Consulars to have a direct damage option, Project-like TK attacks are the most reasonable option available. The proposed change that we offer is that they don't change it. Why should we not voice our concern that we don't want what you want to happen? Ok, ok, you keep saying this as if it were fact, what is your basis? I mean, obviously they have plenty of tech that is better than ours, like Repulsors and hyperdrives and things like that, no question, but that doesn't mean that their every technology is superior to ours. I mean, our computer monitors are certainly much better than theirs, they have both R and G, not just B, and have much better scan rates. So why do you believe that Star Wars small arms technology is better than 21st century Earth tech? At 30m? One burst or so? The rock would still kill the target. Kinetic force and electrical energy have very different effects. Force lightning disrupts the target's neural paths and burns their flesh, kinetic force just crushes things. They are both types of energy, but they have completely different effects. Force does not have mass of it's own, you cannot "fire" raw kinetic energy at a target, you have to move things with the Force to generate a kinetic impact. If you aren't moving things like people or rocks then you'd have to be moving air to do it.

No you can't. No equivocation there, you just can't. Not unless my back is to a wall (in which case the combined forces of your hand and the wall would act to cause crushing damage), or if you wound up and delivered a palm strike, rather than just a push, which is basically just a punch with a different profile. If you just pushed against me, even if you pushed hard enough to knock me backwards, the force would happen over a large enough distance and duration that the physical damage from the push itself would be minimal. If you got picked up off the ground by, say, a high force wind, the wind wouldn't actually hurt, although the landing definitely could. If a single impacting impulse was enough to launch you through the air, then yes, that would be enough to do some serious damage, but that's not how Jedi TK is typically depicted, a Force Push is more carrying the target through the air and then releasing them at a high velocity, like a baseball moving along the arm motion of a pitcher and then flying forward, rather than them smacking them once like the baseball off a bat. You can throw an egg like a baseball and send it flying at near a hundred miles per hour, but try hitting it with a bat.

You're being silly again. A slingshot capable of lobbing medicine ball sized rocks at Project speeds would be huge and unweildy, not to mention the ammo requirements. It would be completely preposterous as a sidearm. If, on the other hand, one could simply use the force to lift and accelerate such a rock, it would be a very efficient tool. Both can only shoot 30m when their attacks are buffed up, when they are concentrating especially hard, basically. Sage/Sorcerer can do it effortlessly. Even then, a Shadow is still only capable of using Force Push to shove objects into people, while Sages have the fine control to impact things with the Force itself. Assassins are likewise unable to use the more powerful lightning attacks like Lightning Strike. The Shadow is clearly designed to be a balance between Force TK abilities and melee combat skills. The Sage is clearly worthless at melee combat, and focuses all that talent into Force Tk options. If your assertion is that Shadows are meant to be as skilled at Force TK as a Sage, then that would make Sages completely pointless. But like I said, it's the type of force being applied (lower case "f" force). A push is a slow but steady force, an acceleration that moves the target. An impact is a rapid blow, an "object" of some kind striking the target. Think of it as if you have to start with your hand in contact with the target. If you try to punch someone with your fist already touching their face, then you'll deal almost no damage, even if you're very strong, while if you try to shove someone while already touching them, you can move them a decent distance. Force TK is about the moving of objects. If you're moving a big rock, you can accelerate it to a significant speed, and because F=Ma, by the time the rock reaches the target it will apply a significant amount of force all at once. If, on the other hand, your projectile has negligible mass, like air does, then the impact force would also be negligible. Look, you can't keep switching between using the lore to say that Jedi cannot have TK attacks and then saying it's silly to use the lore to say that they can't have hadouken. The fact is, Force users in SW lore use TK attacks, both Jedi and Sith, and which uses them more often in the movies is a minor point, while neither use hadouken in the movies, so if you're using the movies as an argument for why Jedi should not use Project, then the argument would mean that neither should get hadouken. Basically, if you insist that the Consular options should be limited to moves Jedi use in the movies, then the class could not exist at all, as there are no direct strictly ranged attacks used by Jedi in the movies. There aren't any Jedi Consular in the movies either, really. Yes, but the impact force of Force Wave is fairly minimal, it would not work as a core direct damage ability like Project does.

They'd still do more damage than a blaster bolt would, particularly against armor. F=Ma. You may not like it, but it's all true. But they can't use the more advanced lightning moves that only a Sorcerer can access, just like a Shadow can't use the more advanced TK moves like a Sage can. Can you name even one scene in which a Jedi fires a big blue fireball at anyone? Even one? Is there even a scene of a Sith firing a fireball? Force push is not a striking attack. It does not damage the target except by them hitting something else. It's like the difference between an open palmed shove and a closed fisted punch. TK object throwing has far more in common with Force Push than Disturbance does, since Force Push is just throwing the target, rather than throwing something at the target.

A rock traveling at the speeds that project does would do considerable amounts of damage, that is a very heavy projectile, even if it is moving a much slower speeds than a shotgun round. It would also have a much greater effect against an armored opponent, because while it wouldn't penetrate the armor, the force would translate much better. Note how easily much smaller rocks are able to damage armored troopers in Return of the Jedi. In either case, both the rock and the shotgun round would do considerably more damage than "nothing" moving at the same speed. Actually, SW firearms seem considerably weaker than Earth firearms. I mean, their auto-cannons have a lower firing rate than an Earth minigun, their sniper rifles have an effective range of only 35m. Storm Troopers can't hit the broad side of a Sandcrawler at 35m, and even when unarmored opponents are hit with a blaster bolt, the wounds created are fairly tiny in comparison to a comparable Earth military weapon. The Star Wars universe has a lot of technology that is far superior to Earths, but that doesn't mean that they are superior in all fields. The problem with what you suggest is that both Project and TK Throw are available to Shadows, as well as to TK-specced sages. Even if one were to agree with you on the idea that a "pure force" attack could conceivably do as much damage as a rock, it would obviously need to be something that only a true expert at Force powers would be capable of in the heat of battle, not someone also focused on melee combat skills. Now, if they swapped the animations so that Project had the current Distrubance animation and Distrubance had the current Project animation, they would also have to switch when you get them, so that you'd get Disturbance at level 1 and Project at level 10 as a Sage, which I don't see the point in doing. How is the move you suggest they should give Sages not a Hadouken?

A bigger bullet traveling at the same speed does more damage. This is why TK Throw does more damage than Project, even though it uses smaller projectiles. Either bullet would do more damage than no bullet at all. How many guns use no projectiles? It moves about as fast as Disturbance does. You know, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is still on the shelves if you want hadoukens. Yes, which is why the dilettantes, the Shadows, are only capable of the rock thing, while the true experts, the Sages, and most specifically the TK-specced Sages, have access to at least a few "pure Force" attacks. The only change I'd like to see is a change to the random projectile tables based on the textures under your feet. Champions Online does this with their "Earth Flight" power, which pulls a boulder out of the ground and lets you fly on it. The composition of this boulder is based on the textures under your feet when you use it, so snowy ground produces an icy rock, desert terrain produces a brown boulder, city streets produce a block of pavement, and if you're falling through the air it even produces a thundercloud instead! This is how Project should work, ideally, in that if you're on a man-made surface, it limits the options to techy bits like droid parts and crates and stuff, while if you're on "natural" terrain it pulls out rocks and pottery and stuff. How many that don't involve hadouken? It is an instant cast, as the damage is applied before the projectile reaches the target, and the character is free to move and use other attacks immediately after activating this one. The animation appears delayed, but the move itself is not. I actually like the effect of having the projectiles flying at the target as I'm running in, or as I'm starting up TK Throw, rather than having to sit through the entire build-up, locked in place like with Disturbance or TK Throw. It feels like my character is multi-tasking, like it's just a casual thing for him because he's so boss. Also, Neox is right, the Consular is definitely aimed at a more mature audience, they have a very passive, cerebral storyline than most classes. While other classes are engaged in a great intergalactic hunt and mission of revenge, or hunting down weapons of mass destruction, the Consular is doing medical research. I'm not saying that makes players who enjoy the Consular any better than those that don't, I'm just pointing out that they are not intended to be an instant-gratification "omg wow!" class.

Perhaps their impact strength does not match their lifting strength. Think of it like a net on a rope, if you just swung the net at someone, it'd do weak damage, because it's a weak impacter, but if you used that net to pick up a 50lb. ball, and then hurled them together at the target, you'd do a lot more damage. Actually, another great example is a gun. If you fire a gun at someone, it launches a projectile, a bullet, and can kill people hundreds of yards away. The bullet doesn't fire itself though, the force generated by gunpowder actually fires it, and yet the gunpower itself is a very weak impacter. If you fire a gun at someone that has no bullet in it, you'd be lucky to harm them even at very close range, because while the projecting force is the same, the air molecules being pushed by the gunpowder are a much weaker impacter than a bullet is. So sages can attack directly with Force energy, using Disturbance, but it takes a lot more power and concentration to do the same amount of damage that hitting people over the head with a rock would do. Shadows can't do this because they don't have as much TK training as Sages do, just as Sages aren't able to stealth. You forgot Option Grp D: Leave them alone.

A few people have been complaining about how they weren't able to complain last night about the downtime, and about how this was somehow a draconian abuse of their rights as consumers. This is not helpful. Constructive criticism is VERY important to a game, a very valuable function, and any effort made by developers to curtail the customers' rights to express constructive criticism is detrimental to their game. That's not what this is though. Complaining about how the servers are down is NOT constructive criticism, because it does not relay any useful information that Bioware would be able to act upon. People are upset when they aren't able to play the game right now? Duh. Bioware knows this. They have the statistics of how many people usually play during this time slot, they know EXACTLY how much of an inconvenience it is any time they shut the servers down for maintenance, better than any of us do, most likely. Telling them that you're upset that the servers aren't up does not tell them anything they don't already know, it doesn't help anyone. By complaining that they brought the servers down, you aren't teaching them anything new. By threatening to quit the game because a server's down, you aren't going to make them any less likely to bring it down again when they feel they have to. They already know anything you could possibly teach them about what a downed server means to you as a player, and we can be assured that they already do everything they can to reduce the frequency and duration of these events, as well as scheduling them as best they can to avoid peak times, nothing you have to say on the matter is going to make any difference there. Now, there are plenty of places where the community can be of assistance, in pointing out bugs, in pointing out elements of the game that don't feel right to you, things that could be improved, features that are missing (like an appearance tab), elements that seem too strong or too weak to be in balance, things like that, and the devs can learn valuable lessons from such discussion, but there's absolutely nothing for them to learn from people whinging about a server downtime, it's like complaining about rain to a weatherman. Complaining about not being able to complain about it is even more pointless.

Only if you want to use a suicide-stick. Your argument here will begin to make sense the instant they remove the "must use double saber" requirements from all Shadow/Assassin abilities, but not a moment before. Clearly a Sage that specs into TK, or even into healing should be pure "casters", range-only Force-users, but there should be an option (likely via the Balance tree) that allows a player to: 1. Wield a single lightsaber effectively, not as well as a Guardian, certainly not as well as a Sentinel, but well enough that if someone enters saber range, you can use those abilities without them seeming a complete waste of time and effort. They should do a balanced amount of damage/efficiency relative to their basic ranged attacks like TK Throw and Project. 2. Use Consular Force abilities too, but clearly not as strongly as a TK-specced build. The game really does need a true hybrid Jedi, like the KOTOR Sentinel. Both the Consular and the Knight are too far from center.

Is there really any problem with them not wanting dozens of "OMG, they shut down the servers for maintenance!" posts? I mean, you can call that "stifling expression" or something, but really what good do those posts EVER do? What effect does anyone expect them to have? Do they think a dev will read those and go "Good Lord! I was completely unaware that the players did not approve of us shutting the severs down while we fixed them! We'll stop doing that immediately! Turn on the servers man!" whinging about server maintenance is a completely pointless exercise, so I see no reason whatsoever to whinge about them removing that whinging. Now, if they were stifling ACTUAL negative feedback, actual constructive feedback about game features that are not meeting expectations, which the devs can use to make positive changes in the game, then that would be another issue entirely, but that's not what's happening here.

I got this one in beta a few months back, it was a blue Consular-type piece that dropped somewhere on Coruscant and I gave it to Kira (I was a Knight at the time). I'm not sure if that version of it still exists though, since they made this model the Tython Knight commendation armor. I do know that the mission Trouble in Deed on Coruscant rewards an orange top which is not a full robe, it's just a tight long sleeve shirt, navy and white, sort of looks like a marching band uniform. And I did see a Jedi running around in Slave Leia gear, it was pretty cool.

Look, what's the alternative? Is the alternative throwing blue fireballs around? Of course not. Any canonical conflicts that arise from Jedi using TK chucking to attack are magnified ten-fold when applied to Jedi shooting Hadouken left and right. There is absolutely NO canonical reference to any such ability, while there are plenty for Jedi using their TK to maneuver things in combat. Ideally, purely in a vacuum, a range-based Jedi would be more about directly effecting the targets, with more moves dedicated to picking them up and flinging them around, because Jedi do that all the time in the canon, but that would be difficult to balance against a Sith class that is based on direct lightning attacks, since it would involve more of a CC impact, and more of a positioning impact. If we accept as a baseline that the moves given to the Consulars would be based on the idea of directly attacking via Force attacks, hitting the enemy for direct damage rather than indirectly damaging them by knocking them around the field, then flinging environmental objects at them is the best way to represent this. Could they have implemented this better? Sure. DCUO has a fairly effective implementation of a TK attack, in that it basically causes a random throwable object to be lifted and tossed at the targeted enemy, but this has two problems, one, it's completely useless when no such objects are available, and two, the game was designed from the ground up for every character to be able to lift and throw objects, so the mechanic is ubiquitous, while in TOR it would only apply to one out of eight classes, and wouldn't be worth doing. CO had a similar TK mechanic as well, but it was extremely buggy and almost never worked right (though I haven't played in a while, maybe they fixed it). In either case, neither implementation could have been balanced against Force Lightning attacks. They could have just given Consulars Force Lightning too, but that's even more canonically sketchy (although there are more canon examples of Jedi using Force Lightning than of using Hadouken).

There is no such thing as "lightside Force energy," nor is there a "jedi equivalent" to Force lightning. A Jedi uses telekinetic force to move objects around, not blue fireballs. Sith do too. Sith use lightning to damage things, so can Jedi. All is one in the Force, but blue fireball attacks only exist in videogames. It's meant to be based on generic rubble, that you're kicking up strong wind that is lifting debris from the ground and hurling it forwards. It would be nice if it paid more attention to the terrain under your feet, for example making techy bits more common spawns when you're on techy terrain, and rocks and stuff more common when on natural terrain, but I imagine their system isn't set up for that. At least it's no longer always water heaters. It's actually the opposite. Force healing is a dark side ability, because it perverts the natural processes. It's a corrosive form of healing, forcing the body to heal damage in opposition to nature, but it does work. The light side can relieve pain and such, but is largely useless against significant damage.

My point is, "junk tossing" is far more Jedi than "blue fireball tossing" is. If there is going to be a projectile Jedi class, "junk tossing" is as "Star Wars" as it gets. So basically you're arguing that there shouldn't even be a Jedi counterpart to the Inquisitor? That there shouldn't be a Jedi ranged class at all? I can't agree with that. Any argument to be made about "chucking objects" not being something that is "proper" for a Jedi to do would apply double for Hadokens. Also, just in a general sense, I like that Project is a "delayed instant." Since you're summoning a force outside of yourself, it can hit while you're doing something else, so that by the time your object impacts the target, you can already be hitting them with TK Throw, or running towards them, or charging up one of your other attacks. This makes it seem like you're attacking much faster and more fluidly.

Look, let's be clear here: 1. NOBODY is talking about making the Sage unbalancedly strong. That's not on the table. Any increase in the Sage's lightsaber abilities would have to leave them either no stronger than they currently are, or stronger in one way but weaker in another to balance it out. 2. There is room to do a flat increase to saber potential. As it stands now, even if you run up to a Sage it makes more sense for them to spam their 30m attacks than to use their saber strikes, because the ranged attacks do more damage. This can change, they can make the saber attacks at least as strong as the ranged ones, so that if "based" the saber is their best option. 3. There is room to convert the Balanced tree into more of a hybrid tree, sacrificing the ultimate levels of healing and TK strength in favor of having an additional saber strike, and additional overall saber damage. It would be balanced, a player that pursues that path would not be as strong at healing or range as other Sages, nor would he be as devastating in close as a Shadow/Knight, but he would be capable at all ranges, a bit like a DPS Powertech/Vanguard. I like balanced classes, like the Sentinel in KOTOR. I really want that in TOR, a class that is equally at home with crazy TK abilities like Project as he is with acrobatic saber strikes. The current Knight options are all too much saber, too little TK, the Sage is too much TK, too little saber, and the Shadow is too much double-bladed suicide-stick. We need another option somewhere.

How is chucking objects at people "dark side"? What's "evil" about throwing stuff around? Lightning I get, sort of, but not throwing stuff. I just see that as a neutral move, like saber throw, or Force Speed, or just using a saber at all. If we need other examples, Yoda used TK to pick up Luke's X-Wing, and also to smash a star cruiser into the ground during the Clone Wars series.

I did, if I wanted Dragon Ball Online, there's a game for that, I wanted Star Wars, and Star Wars doesn't have "force projectiles", they either slam people with objects or pick them up and throw them, they don't slap people around with glowy blue fields. Besides, those abilities are in the game, they just aren't the only abilities available. Seriously? Classic Project. I know he's technically a sith, but the ability is available to both sides logically. At 4:38. You can find more, I'm sure.

But the "throwing junk" abilities are the best feature the class has! The "blue wave" force powers are super boring and generic.

I definitely think that Sages should be viable in with lightsabers. They can make it a talent thing if they like, such as putting the abilities needed to do this into the Balance tree so that you need to spec to be melee functional, but it should be an option. To those that argue that Shadows are the melee sages, they don't work because they have to use the stupid-sticks to use most of their moves. If Shadows could be 100% effective using standard lightsabers then it would be a completely different story, but they can't, so we need sages that can fight with their sabers. They should obviously be the weakest at sabers of any of the four Jedi classes, but they can stand to be considerably stronger than they are if they put the effort into it.