But that's not freedom, because stats matter too. There's no need for players to choose, they should be able to have the very best stats available to them at any given time, AND the very best appearance they have access to at any given time, simultaneously. The technology exists, just not currently in this game. Just of the ones I've played, in order of release: CoH LotRO CO DCUO There may be others out there, I understand Rift has some variation on this theme that allows for at least better customization than SWtOR, and I understand that WoW has also added an improved customization feature since I last played it. There are also a number of single player games that allow for better appearance customization than SWtOR while offering similar gameplay elements, such as Saints Row, Terraria, and others that you can use editing tools to get the look you want, like Dragon Age 2. Why make the distinction? In games like CO and DCUO, your stats are determined by your gear, and gear does grant access to new costumes, it's just semantics to argue that they should be any different than what SWtOR offers. That's kind of sad then, because TOR's customization is well behind most of the MMOs I've played, aside from WoW. I mean, it's adequate enough, but there are much more versatile character creation systems out there. That's your choice, but you're sort of disconnecting yourself from the discussion by doing so. If you're going to arbitrarily rule out superhero MMOs then we might as well also arbitrarily rule out fantasy MMOs as well, because those have magic in them, which makes a pair of shorts that grant +willpower a much more reasonable thing. I can make much closer analogs to my Trooper and Consular in DCUO or CO than I ever could in WoW, both visually and in performance.

I've REed several very low level Cybertech and Artificing recipes over the past few days. I can't speak to the rate of return, but it's not zero, at least.

Bah, I don't like the idea at all of purple crystals being super high level rare stuff. They should be available somewhere in the teens at the latest. It was also a bad idea to tie stats to color crystals at all, color crystals should be nothing but optics, and what stats they offer should be redistributed to the other types of mods.

Never RE anything that was not crafted by you or another crafter. Some such items yield materials, but rarely enough to offset the cost of the item, and they NEVER give you schematics. Only crafted items yield schematics.

It's really most other AAA MMOs, and even really most other AA and A and C- MMOs that already have this feature. Pretty much every decent MMO, and many decent non-MMO RPGs in the last five years has a character appearance feature that is more developed than SWtOR's, it's hardly unreasonable for an incoming player to expect Bioware to have kept up with at least 2008 game design in a 2011 game. Isn't merging the numeric stats of two different items the entire point of the mod system? Because better appearance control would make the game more fun. The better question is why NOT allow this? You think? Seriously though, custom gear would still be custom gear. If all custom gear worked the way you seem to think it does, where all that matters is that it's a "look" that you dump a predetermined set of stats into, then it already works how your "nightmare" scenario envisions. I don't think that is the point of the custom system though, the point of the custom system is versatility, that you can choose to put a mod in with +surge OR a mod with +cunning, and that this choice is left to the player, not to the designers. Being able to adjust the stat balance of the gear is the justification for the custom system's existence, which is why I'd fully expect plenty of people to be wearing orange gear even with an appearance tab projecting a completely different look over top of it.

They have actually indicated that an a-tab is in development, they just need to speed it up. And no, having more orange schematics on the market would NOT help. It would still be a system that is far more hassle than it's worth and that completely devalues any non-orange gear, and completely devalues the armor and weapon crafting professions that do not make mods for orange gear. What people don't seem to be getting is that the orange system itself is broken, not just the current state of it, or the current understanding of it, or something else that would self-correct over time.

Is that a serious question? Because the game already drops "under armor." If there were an appearance customization system, then you could wear your very best gear at all times, whether you got it from a drop, a reward, crafting, whether its stats were hard-locked or custom. If there were an appearance customization system then ALL loot would have value so long as either it provided better stats than what you had, or looked better than what you had, since you wouldn't have to discard ugly but stronger gear, or pretty but weaker gear. Yes, and it all balances out into a good economy, everything has a value and people charge what the market will sustain, everyone wins. As easy as it is to acquire mods for oranges, it's just as easy to acquire standard gear to wear under your appearance, especially if you're Armormech or Synthweave, which is as it should be. While it's true that the appearance attached to any individual piece of gear would be less important, the styles themselves would be equally as important. You might buy, for example, a social hat, and only equip it in the style slot, or use it to learn the style, or whatever mechanism they employ, but it would still have value in that role. Now the value of customizable gear over standard gear is in its versatility. While standard gear is take it as it is, customizable gear can be tweaked and upgraded. You can replace mods to make it stronger, or more suited to your play style. Get a piece with great armoring but that you have a better Enhancement for? You can raise it's stats. Does it offer +def instead of +crit? Slot in a +crit mod instead. You can shape it how you want it, "customize" it, as it were, which is the entire point. It can also be easier to take a level 25 armor and upgrade it using mods at levels 26, 27, 28, 29, and 30, rather than buying an entirely new armor piece at each level, or waiting several levels with no upgrades at all, falling behind the curve. And of course, while an Armormech or Synthweave might have an easier time simply replacing his base armor with new models, a Cybertech or Artificer might be better off upgrading oranges, given his available options. Or, I know as much, if not more than you do, and still disagree with you. They don't have to copy anyone else, I've merely provided examples of other games that do a better job than what we have now. I totally don't mind if SWtOR continues to have a system different than any other game out there, so long as it gets the job done. The current system, for all it's strengths, does NOT get the job done. It only goes half way, and needs to do more, with less. It shouldn't. The game would only need to store in active memory what the appearance is of the appearance slotted item, not the stats, since they would be irrelevant so long as it's slotted. For every other player, unless they were using "inspect," the stats of your gear would not need to be sent to their client. If a slotting based system would be too system-intensive, they could instead use a DCUO style of wardrobe, in which case the stats of the "style" gear wouldn't even be a factor, as once you'd "learned" a given style, you could discard the item it was originally attached to completely if you wished. In that case, you'd only be loading a tiny fragment of extra data to the character, the name of the model you were using. Plenty of other games transmit WAY more data, in far more action-paced PvP combat.

What is your point? I'm not asking for anything that is a feature of a mature game, this is a feature that plenty of games have launched with, and that has been requested of this game since early in beta. I'm just stressing that the compromises they developed are not sufficient to the task, and they need to make implementing a complete solution one of their priorities.

I don't know about that, I mean, on one of my mains I might have hundreds of different styles in total, and perhaps only use one combination of them for months on end, but I highly value those pieces that I do have on, and it usually did take some effort to acquire most of them in the first place. But like this holiday season two of my characters got this nifty Christmas sweater, so I threw that on instead of their standard tops (which took all of ten seconds and did not involve any transfer of funds), and then I took another character and equipped a few pieces of the new "Holiday Elf" set that fit the rest of her look, then recolored a few pieces of her wardrobe from white/light blue/yellow to white with tasteful red highlights. It was fun and easy to do, I can't imagine even bothering under SWtOR's current system, too much hassle. It's worth noting that the sweaters were a rare drop, only available during the holidays, which none of my other characters have, and the other "elf" pieces had to be purchased using tokens gained from holiday themed activities, so acquiring them required a certain amount of effort, but the point is, once I own them, I can do whatever I want with them. And as I've noted, acquiring cool looks, fine, that can be difficult, time consuming costly, what have you. But once you have it, it should be YOURS, you should be able to put it on, take it off, whatever, and that shouldn't impact your gameplay. If you get a cool looking level 25 blue armor, then by level 30 you shouldn't be forced to choose between continuing to have obsolete stats in that slot, or having to look for some alternate version of that armor, IF it's available, AND the stats to power it, when you already have that version right there, and you already have a stronger blue/green armor that you picked up automatically as you leveled. Once you have an appearance, you should be able to do what you want with it, no hassle, no cost. I still have yet to hear a single confirmed critted orange, so far they seem to be only a rumor, while people have reported making dozens of the things without a single augment slot, which indicates that at best, the rate of crit on these things is far too low to consider their existence to be statistically significant.

Yeah, there are a lot of elements of SWtOR's design that remind me of archaic MMOs that I used to play, and this is certainly one of them. I suspect that a lot of the defenders of the current status quo are immigrants from these relics, and have some form of Stockholm Syndrome. I fully support everyone's right to make a game of any element they choose, I just don't think that Bioware should be supporting this practice, and that the majority of players would be happier with more convenient customization than those that find the current model to be "fun." Bare in mind, there would still be exploration elements to the system, as you would not be able to use a look unless you could find at least one copy of it, so you might still have to farm a certain mob or track down a rare recipe or something. DCUO, the system I reference as having a good customization system, has plenty of rare and sought after "styles," as they call them. It even broadens the options, as it effectively makes EVERY piece of gear in the game an "orange piece", so when you do find the piece you want, you can use it from that point on, rather than having to discard it once the stats make it obsolete! I think that goes too far. I think that there is value in the progression, that if someone does choose to wear one or more high level pieces, you can acknowledge their progress, and that there is some fun to be had in finding that rare piece of gear. I think that, at the very most, they should just allow for a selection of 3-5 different base outfits at creation, much like you can do when you get your first companion with their wardrobe, and nothing would be available that wouldn't be available already by level 5 or so, mostly just different colored versions of the same style. Of course, ideally we'd have full pallet control as well, which would make that latter bit moot (at the very least being able to rotate colors around the pallet). I wouldn't actually mind if they completely disconnected the two, which I agree would be simpler, and would actually be much more in tune with the license (given that there is no "gear progression" in Star Wars). While as I said I think that there should be some form of "style progression", in which new styles become available as a result of drops, missions, crafting, etc., and there should certainly be stat progression as you level via similar means, they wouldn't have to be linked up, they could go to a model in which you more get direct mods slotted directly onto your person, offering the same benefits gear brings now, but not being attacked to a specific pair of pants or whatever. Champions Online does this, having six "gear" slots that do not directly correspond to any specific body part, and while some do unlock costume pieces, this is largely an arbitrary process. So SWtOR could go that route, rewarding both "gear" that raises stats, and "costumes" that allow you to change your appearance, but not necessarily linking the two. That sounds like a massive overhaul though, a complete change to all the gear in the game that would not be undertaken likely. Adding something like "appearance override slots" would be a fairly minor UI modification that a good 2-3 guys could bang out in a week or less, and a full DCUO system would probably not be that much harder to implement. Given the difference in workload, I think adding the latter systems should be the short term priority, but they can consider your plan for the long term. But not scalable or modifiable base stats. If they have the base stats to be balanced against a level 20 armor with an Armor Augment in, then they wouldn't even be close to balanced against a level 50 armor with an Augment in, and much less against one with a +Crit or something. and that's why the strawman arguments are so silly, they say "if one element has to be tricky, like leveling, then every little thing about the game should also be a pain in the ###." Well that's just not true, some things should be a challenge, and other things should be convenient. Doing group content should be a challenge, finding a group should be convenient. finding cool appearances can be difficult, but once found, switching between them without harming your performance should be easy. "If I only had a brain. . ." I reject the idea that you should need to be able to see other people's gear for PvP purposes, I mean you should be able to tell what class they are regardless of appearance, and besides orange gear already allows you to wear armor from other classes, like Gunslingers in full Jedi robes with peak performance. DCUO's PVP there is no way to tell what class or powerset the opponents have until they start attacking, and it seems to work out just fine. But even if we do entertain the idea that it's important for PvP purposes, it's an easy enough fix. Just have it so that the appearance overrides don't work on opposing factions on PvP servers. While friendlies might see your Trooper as wearing the Guardian robes he thinks looks cool, to any opposing player he would just see whatever random collection of plate he's actually wearing. It shouldn't be a problem to do, since all that happens is the server sends a certain set of numbers telling your client what appearance model to display, all it needs to do is pull those numbers from column A when sending them to friendlies, and column B for any enemies. In any case, PvE players should not be penalized because PvP players are too stupid to be able to fight a Trooper wearing robes. Always.

At least yours were individually coordinated. I have a screenshot of my Elara wearing all the best pieces I had available at the time, which meant that she had a yellow helmet, a blue chest, green pants, and red boots. And the thing that you are missing is that this is completely unnecessary. There's absolutely no reason why we should have to look like what we're wearing. We should look like the clothing we'd like to look like we're wearing, regardless of the stats of the gear we actually have equipped. This is how it works in many other games, like the afore mentioned DCUO, in which practically every level 30 is wearing either full or partial "T1" or "T2" armor, and yet almost none of them have more than a piece or two of it actively visible on their character, with the majority of their visible slots consisting of lower tier gear. Your argument isn't even internally consistent within the game world, as you can already turn off helmet display, so that my character who runs around without a helmet on still has full helmet stats, and also if one insists that stats must relate to appearance, then it becomes ridiculous to believe that it's possible to "upgrade" a set of spandex pants to have the same armor rating as bulky plate armor, and yet that is exactly what is already possible within the orange armor system. There is no logical argument that justifies the current system from any sort of "realism" perspective. Which, if you'll notice, is the central thesis of this thread, ahem. . . Character Appearance should not require effort .

Not all classes have interrupts, Commandos, for example. We do have some CC abilities, but the only ones that work on Elites or higher are Cryo Grenade (which is not an interrupt and has a long cooldown) and the Stock Strike (with a talent) or Concussion charge, both of which are close range only (on a long range class). Even on classes that do have interrupts (like by Powertech from beta), the interrupts typically have cooldowns far longer than how quickly elite enemies roll from power-attack to power-attack. I much prefer the system employed by both CO and DCUO, in which there is just a single key (shift) that any class can use to go into a defensive stance, which reduces incoming damage and negates CC effects from the attacks, at the expense of not doing any damage while doing so. It results in a much more active and reactive form of gameplay, without taking up a toolbar slot or suffering from a cooldown. The companion AI should be intelligent enough to know this and only use abilities when it would be efficient to do so, choosing within itself not to use AoE abilities when there are not more than 2 enemies around. Even Dragon Age 2's clunky AI interface could be trained to understand this on its own. The options for controlling companion AI are far too clunky to expect players to micromanage them to this degree, especially since you can only do so by expanding the companion toolbar in such a way that it overwrites the player's own secondary toolbar. You can't even bind keys to activate the abilities on the companion toolbar unless the bar is expanded (for example binding a key to the 9th ability they have will do nothing while their bar is collapsed). As it stands, the only companion controls I actually use are to disable "grapple line" style abilities so that they don't pull enemies close to me, make sure that they're in the appropriate "stance" (which I usually do only once over the lifetime of the character), and then sometimes manually tell them to attack (if it's a tank pet). Anything else you haven't given us the tools to do, without sacrificing an entire toolbar of abilities. Abilities on a 20 minute rotation are too precious to actually use, especially if you might die in the process and not be able to use it on your second try. Maybe if death reset the cooldown on these abilities they would be worth counting on. Yes, but that's making it the player's problem, when if the player is of the appropriate level then it's really your problem for not balancing it well. A player should not have to be 2-3 levels above his opponent to face a reasonable, soloable challenge.

It's also a problem at lower levels. I've tried for two consecutive nights to find even one other person on the Fleet that wants to do an Esseles run with my new level 10, and there have been no takers even after an hour waiting around (during two different time periods). I never had that problem during beta.

Bioware's system allows for more flexibility than some much older games, but it's woefully behind the times compared to others. It's basically like touting a car company for not strictly adhering to Ford's :any color you want, so long as it's black" philosophy in 2011. Yes, you can theoretically pick up older looks, but in a way that requires FAR more hassle than such a benefit DESERVES. That presumes that each of those worlds has a "best" to have. But no, there is nothing good about having hassles involved in character customization, so all it is would be one good world, which is watered down by the worst the other world has to offer, making them both worse for having involved that second world at all. Ideally something more akin to DCUO's costume system, although with far fewer options at character creation. I'd even be fine with no more options at character creation, I just want freedom of choice within the appearances I've already accumulated. The average character, even by level 10, has acquired around 3-5 different tops and 3-5 different pants, and yet every level 10 character will be wearing one of 1-3 possible looks in either of those slots, either the commendation piece, the Heroic reward, or, if they're complete slackers, the highest tier story quest reward in that slot. There is no choice involved, except the choice to forgo ideal stats, only one option will give you the best possible stats. Instead, you should be able to, through no more effort than clicking a button a couple of times, wear ANY of those several pieces you'd accumulated, while retaining the stats of the very strongest piece you've accumulated. There is no justification for it to be anything otherwise, beyond that "this is how they did it."

No. Someone wasn't reading. But not everything in the game deserves to have a value to it. It's like if you go to a restaurant, you expect that the meal itself will cost money, you expect that a nice drink will cost money. You expect that desert will cost money, but just getting water should be free, they should bring some bread to the table for free, using the bathroom should be free, etc. If they attach a price to every single thing, including a fee just to have a chair at the table, then that seems excessive. Some things should have a cost associated, being able to change your appearance within the options you already have access to should not be one of those. "Realism" is far out the door already. My character has full helmet stats, even though she never wears a helmet. My character has the stats of full plate leggings, even though her leggings are just as skintight as cloth. And don't forget that this is Star Wars, a universe in which level 50 Obiwan didn't wear anything bulkier or more "fabulous" than level 1 Obiwan. Arguments of "realism" are entirely out of place in this game when it comes to matching appearance to performance. Yes, as you level up you earn the right to wear fancier and more "impressive" types of gear, to show off your status, but there's no reason why you should have to wear this fancier gear if you prefer to to otherwise, and there's no practical benefit to making it more difficult to not wear these new looks.

It often comes up in discussions about orange gear that it works well because you can, in theory, acquire any look you like, provided that you "work hard enough to achieve it." This, to me, sounds ridiculous. This is a game, and while it's perfectly justifiable, even expected that plenty of rewards would take a certain amount of work to achieve, appearance management should not be one of them. Sure, gaining new appearances can and should take some effort, I am NOT talking about a system that would allow you to pick any level 50 armor you want at level 1, or that would allow a Trooper to run around in Sage robes without consequences, I'm just talking about a very basic appearance management system that does not require you to jump through all sorts of hoops just to retain an appearance that you'd already acquired, while also progressing your stats. This should not be difficult. You should not have to spend more money to do this. You should not need to have any specific crafting skills involved. It should not take more than one player, you should not need to remove and replace mods, it should just happen. A player should be able to effortlessly flip through any costume pieces that he's acquired over his career, and choose the one he likes best at the moment. If, five minutes later, he decides to try on something else, he should be able to do so, and there should not be a cost involved, and he should be able to do so again and again and again without penalty. Now if a system like that were implemented, there would be a great demand for armor of all types, not just orange ones, because ANY armor could grant the appearance that you like, and being able to shift through them easily would make variety a much more desirable trait than in the current model where you need to spend thousands of credits swapping mods around even IF you have orange versions of both pieces. It would also make armors of all types desirable because you could retain the stats of them regardless of their appearance, so armors that have good stats for your level, but that clash with the rest of your gear, or just look silly in and of themselves, you can throw on anyways, and use the appearance management system to ignore their silly appearance. Plenty of games do this already, and it works just fine. SWtOR do this too. Let's stop making silly claims about how it's a good thing that appearance control is difficult, or that having better appearance controls would allow Sages to run around in Trooper armor (it wouldn't have to), let's just work together to get this done.

first, you don't have to understand the need for it, just understand that other players DO understand the need for it, and that because they need it, it should be added, even if you don't need it. Second, Nobody's talking about a system in which Inquisitors could be running around in Trooper Armor, so stop throwing out straw men. An appearance system wouldn't allow for any appearances that the current orange system wouldn't allow for, it just makes things more convenient. [2] answers [1].

Yeah, Armormech is useless, but that seems to be as intended so I don't expect any change to it. With any luck they'll have an appearance modification system in at some point that will make Armormech useful again.

Those items might be bugged. In the previous build the blue items could be modded, and orange items replaced most of those in the loot/reward tables, maybe those items are leftovers that got missed. My trooper is currently wearing skintight Jedi Knight pants modded out with Aim stats 1. because they're the only orange pants I've come across, and 2. because they make her *** look fabulous. In theory, she could wear entirely Jedi Knight gear, even under the current system, although the giant cannon might be a giveaway. Really the only classes that can get away with anything are Guardians/Juggernauts, who can disguise themselves as Sages/Sorcerers at the expense of having to wear light armor. I think the game can survive it.

No, there'd be considerably MORE value to crafting after the A-Tab. The reason is that now, if an Armor or Arms crafter makes an orange gear, it's appearance only, and the people they sell them to will only ever need to buy ONE of them, the one that they want, and from that point on they would only have use for mods for that slot. Then there are the non-orange pieces, which some people might want, but a lot of people don't care about because the appearance isn't what they want, and they have their orange piece. With an appearance tab, every piece of gear in the game has two separate values, how they look, and how they perform. That doubles the value of each piece. It means that a level 50 character might have value for a level 10 armor, because that armor has an appearance that they like. It also means that a level 40 character can equip a piece of green/blue/purple crafted gear without worrying about how it'll mess up his look. It means that players are much more likely to seek out the best gear possible for their level, rather then trying to find mods for their orange gear only. Adding an appearance tab would make EVERY crafting set more valuable, not less. And that's just under the current system. Personally, I'd like to see every piece of gear become mostly customizable. Instead of having no customization on green, none on blue, up to two on purple, and four on orange, I would have it so that all gear has at least 2 slots available (mod and enhance, also color in weapons), just that green gear would come with no mods pre-slotted and would have a reduced armor, blue versions would have the equivalent of a blue Armoring so higher armor and would have one blue Mod slotted in, and purple versions would have the equivalent of a purple Armoring and both slots pre-filled with Blue mods. This keeps the disparity in base stats, and means that these pieces would obsolesce over time, but for a given level range you would be able to customize and upgrade them a bit to carry them over the hump to the next best piece of gear. In my view, the mod system should have nothing to do with appearance whatsoever, it should be completely separate from appearance. What mods should be for is enhancement and customization. The best gear you're likely to have at any given level should be less out of the box than it would be if you slotted superior mods into it, and of course the stats it comes with might not be exactly what is ideal for your character, and mods can be used to clear that gap. I want it to be simple, easy, and cheap. Changing your appearance is not something that should have a cost attached, at least not within the collection of appearances you've already amassed. It happens constantly. Even my new level 10 Sage is wearing chest and leg pieces that I consider less attractive than ones that I'd earned earlier in that character's progression. My level 31 Trooper has come across dozens of pieces that have had slightly, or even significantly higher stats than what I have on, while not looking quite as good to me, or completely mismatching other pieces I have on. I have a great shot of my Elara Dorne running around in the best armor I had for her at the time, which was basic "storm troopery" armor, but with the helmet having yellow highlights, the torso having blue, the pants having green, and the boots having red. The companions are even more a victim of the current system, as they cannot equip a lot of the orange and purple pieces, which are class restricted (and companions have no classes, even if they look like they do). Customizable coloring would definitely help, but even the cut of an outfit is often a downgrade from what came before. And keep in mind, by "had to wear," I'm talking in practical terms, not literal. If I am given the choice between wearing a piece of armor that I like the look of, and then in my inventory is a piece of armor that can replace it and offer 5% better stats across the board, then I would consider that a circumstance in which the game is at least strongly encouraging me to put on the second armor. My point is I should never have to choose, I should be able to equip that second piece of armor without a second thought, and retain whatever appearance I've already had and enjoyed. Earning NEW looks might be something worthy of some effort, but retaining existing looks should take zero effort. Not everything deserves to be a slog. There are blues where you can change out the Armoring slots? They are already, by weapon and stance. Still, I think they would be better off just having a little icon over their head in PvP to tell their class.

Some people develop these very distorted ideas of what an MMO "must" be, but the fact is that an MMO is whatever the players want it to be. They are about playing in a space with other players, but how much each player interacts with others should be entirely up to him. Some players play MMOs and never group, blasphemous, I know, but the point is whether they are having fun or not. Players should be allowed to interact, there should be things that players can do with each other, but player interaction should never be forced on players, there should always be options. If you make a purple armor and RE, you get a fraction of the materials, back, likely the most expensive of the materials. If the "drop rate" of orange schematics was relative to the drop rate of purple ones then you would lose a LOT of purple-class materials in the quest to achieve the perfect orange schematic. The reward needs to be more than just an empty hull that has no practical strength, and which the Armormech has no ability to empower. It either needs to come pre-filled, or the Armormech needs the skills to fill it. If it takes multiple purples to learn to craft it, then it needs to be purple+ when you get it, purple plus the ability to upgrade it later. I was under the impression that purple gear already came with purple Mods and Enhancements in them, just not Armorings as those were burned in. It used to be that mods were locked into place, and that while you could overwrite them, you could to remove them. While they needn't go back to that on ALL gear, making the default mods placed in these "purple-filled oranges" locked in wouldn't be a terrible idea. Also, if you remove a mod from a piece of gear, shouldn't both the gear and the mod be bound to you? This would at least prevent you from selling them piecemeal on the open market.

This was pre-nerf, but that's what I was making. I'd send MX, Aric, and Butler Droid off on the high-reward missions, each would come home with 1-4K, and it would really add up.

Cortosis weave in the armors/clothing. Also the light sabers seem to be a bit weaker than they ended up after a few thousand years. If you get your perfect look by level 10 then you shouldn't have to work to keep it. Take DCUO as an example. In that game, about 20-30% of the game's total costume pieces are available in character creation (although you only get to leave CC with the clothes on your back, so if you want options you need to re-collect all those styles later through other means), After that, another 30-40% of the styles are available between 1-30 (cap) from vendors, drops, quest rewards, etc. Then, the remainder of styles are available only at endgame in the form of loot and their version of "Commendation tokens", so there is plenty of gear that says "I'm level 30 and full of win." So they have plenty of "endgame" gear with endgame stats and endgame appearances, but I've never seen anyone that actually wears a full suite of endgame loot visually, because in DCUO the two can be managed independently. Of my six endgame characters in that game, most have at least a couple pieces of level 30 gear showing (not usually the piece they have buffing their stats in that slot, but something that you'd need to be level 30 to earn at least), but usually also have several pieces that com from much lower levels, in some cases even bits that they chose in character creation have remained from 1-30+. Not one of them has survived the trip without changing their appearances in some way though, not one has been satisfied with their appearance at level 10 and never found at least a piece or two that they considered to be an improvement. But if I had, then I'd much rather to be able to keep that look than to be forced to change it, or have to jump through crazy hoops to keep it. Now I'm not expecting a system with quite as much freedom as DCUO's, for example I'd be fine with having no choices at character creation (although being able to choose between 2-3 class-appropriate starter set options would be nice), but even just keeping the post CC appearance tabs would be great, allowing even level 10 characters the option to choose between the 3-4 tops and pants styles they're likely to have come across over that period. I guarantee you that if that were an option then even by Esseles/Black Talon you'd be noticing a lot more player creativity in appearance.

Oranges are still inferior to an appearance management system, since they are much more hassle to come across and much more hassle to keep updated, they devalue the armor crafting professions, and they devalue rewarded and looted gear, which makes the "reward" factor of the game much less satisfying. Basically they are just a massive "fun" drain for absolutely no benefit. Yes, and we've been making suggestions on how they can make it better. No. But this is a game. No. Players should not have to seek out crafters for this sort of function. If it's an option, it should be available via vendors. Perhaps crafters could do this for slightly less than the vendor would charge, but there always needs to be a reasonable player-free alternative. No. MMOs shouldn't require dependence on other players. Other players are around, they can be interacted with, they can help you out with things, but they should never be necessary. Player interaction should be for FUN, not because you can't function without it. Yes, mom. Now I'm going to get back to playing a game to have fun, rather than playing it as a second career. I would only support that much effort and expense if the orange piece generated at the top came pre-stuffed with a full suite of purple mods, so that it had superior stats to the purple versions you had to sacrifice to learn it. Yes, that is exactly what I mean. There's an anime character named "Rock Lee" who is a very hard worker. He sets a goal for himself to, say, do a thousand push-ups, and if he fails at that goal, he has a penalty goal, like "run a thousand laps." Nobody forces these rules on him, and he can quit at any time, but he likes the reward of hard work, so he sets these goals, and he has the self control to complete them. He doesn't impose those rules on anyone else, because he feels that the reward comes from setting and achieving the goal. If you believe there is value in YOU acquiring and maintaining a full set of orange gear, then you pursue that goal, and you enforce the rules you choose to set for yourself. You shouldn't have to force those same rules on me for you to gain enjoyment from the process. It's like those people that were whinging about how Normal mode was "too easy" for Dragon Age 2. Well there are two harder modes than that, feel free to play those if you like! Make your own fun. I prefer a system that is designed so that the baseline experience is fairly easy, so that anyone can get in there and enjoy it, but that allows players to set their own rules of self-control to make things more challenging. Like take space combat, for example. If you get all the upgrades, it becomes really very easy to beat (beyond the first few stages that are always easy), but if you want more of a challenge, just don't equip all the available upgrades, or set personal goals like destroying targets that aren't necessary objectives, and judge your own performance based on your own criteria. I just cannot justify those who want to make other people's lives harder and less fun simply because they're incapable of setting and maintaining their own rigorous gameplay rules. That's the problem I'm having too. I'm constantly getting gear that either looks awesome, but is non-modifiable and has worse stats than what I've got, so it's trash, or it has great stats but looks stupid, so I'll either swap it in for a couple levels and bare looking stupid for a while (not fun) or do without the good stats until I can find/mod something with both good stats and good appearance (also not fun). WHY? Why is "fun" a bad thing? Even the most "generous" proposals for improving the orange gear system would do little to solve this problem. They might make it slightly easier to find orange gear, but most non-orange gear would still be complete vendor trash unless the system also included some way to make practical use of them. I mean, the only way I could think to solve that problem while retaining the gist of the "orange" system would be if any player, regardless of crew skills, could RE any piece of gear they found into an orange version, OR could RE it into a mod that they could slot into their existing orange gear. This would be the only way in which a piece of ugly but strong gear could be made useful, or a piece of gorgeous but weak gear could be made useful, while retaining the "orange only" system for appearance control. Nope. Well, I can't speak for everyone else, but I'd likely give it up after they add the appearance tab system to the game, assuming it works well enough. Claiming that a problem is not a problem is ignoring the problem. No it wouldn't, and repeating this lie only istracts from the issue at hand. I don't see them as mutually exclusive, but forced to choose I would much rather have an appearance tab than to have statbased armor. Consider the lore. There is no statbased armor in the lore. "high level" characters in the movies and books and other materials do not wear functionally superior gear to low level characters. There might be some minor distinctions between "cloth" and "heavy" armors, but not between the clothing worn by New Hope Luke and that worn by Jedi Luke. I think it's best to keep the stats of SW gear separate in your own head from appearance. It just gets silly if you take the idea of the gear "empowering" your character too seriously. Instead, just consider it that your character gains access to more fancy gear as he gains status, and also that your character gets stronger as he goes, and as it so happens, a portion of that strengthening is attached to "gear", but really appearance and stats should have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Nobody's talking about that. Nobody's talking about making it any easier to get access to high level gear. If you look like you're wearing a full set of epic endgame gear, then you must have found some epic, endgame gear in some epic, endgame content. All this system would do is make it so that if you do have epic, endgame gear, but think that it makes you look ridiculous, then you can choose to look like any other looks you've acquired as you've leveled, while retaining those epic, engage stats. or DCUO, Champions Online, CoH, LotRO, WoW, etc. Yeah, but WoW came out seven years ago, and games have gotten better since then. Most games that have launched after WoW have had an appearance management system in at launch. There are places where it's fair to compare a game to an older game at launch, and unfair to expect them to have all the features and content that took that older game years to develop, but in other cases, a new game does need to learn from the mistakes of older games and get in line with the new. Nobody is expecting SWTOR to launch with full freedom space combat like SWG took a year after launch to develop, or for it to have a full 80+ levels of content like WoW has now, but an appearance tab is definitely something that should have been in the game months ago.

Bit of a waste of time, if you can't find enough decent missions for all your team, just send the remainders on the shortest missions on the first tier. They'll only be gone five minutes or so and then everything will reset.