I'm okay with that. There is a work around for the rng in buying 252 gear directly. The problem is the work around is too slow. What I think is a better fix that still gives incentive to grind gear, but speeds up the "bad luck" protection of buying 252, is increasing the drop rate of 252 boxes and masterwork data crystals in command crates. I don't know what it is now, but I've opened a ton of boxes since 5.10 and gotten 1 252 box and 0 crystals. That needs to be increased a lot. It might not be the most fun way for players, but it keeps the spirit of what they are aiming for without it taking months or 5 of the same AC to finish. Plus the command system doesn't seem to have much of a reason to exist now.

I think more than anything I'm excited for what comes next. For my Knight they've been teasing Kira/Scourge for months and that continued on Ossus. The story itself felt like a good setup for a renewed focus on Empire vs Republic, which I miss. The new characters republic side are solid and I really look forward to seeing them again. I liked how KotFE/ET expaned the cast we worked with... I just didn't like the ones they picked. Sorry, but I don't care at all about Aric or Kaliyo, etc. Empire side I'm not really sold on the return of Malgus, but I can't say it doesn't leave me wanting to know more. I went into it on both sides expecting an appetizer and that's what we got. I thought it was a great way to introduce a new story for us to look forward to. And for the first time in awhile it's a story I'm invested in. We'll see where it goes from there. Ossus itself is a pretty planet and I enjoy the daily area. I like that there are lots of decorations to hunt, datacrons, and WBs. It feels good to be there and run around doing stuff regularly. All things that make it, to me at least, finally feel like an mmo again. I haven't felt like that about a new planet/daily area since Yavin. Iokath is terrible. Zakuul/Nathema/Odessen having nothing to explore. You can only access small corridors of the planet and there isn't anything to do there.

With the exception of the many bugs (software, not the kind we murder) and the shortness of the story I feel Ossus is pretty fantastic. I haven't been this high on SWTOR in awhile. I hope the quality of the content on Ossus carries forward. I just hope whatever is next is a bit longer and with fewer bugs.

Nope. That's why I said I think they need to add a lot of new non-CM decorations. The decoration fabricator droids haven't been updated since launch of strongholds I think. The crafting reagents for fabricator parts require a max of rank 7 parts (the max when strongholds were introduced i think?). They are the perfect place to add some new decorations, including artwork, for people who aren't credit rich. Update the materials required to craft fabricator/prefabs parts used to trade to the droids and add a lot of decorations to all 3 droids. The cartel market keeps the game alive, so I expected/accept most of the best stuff will come from packs. That doesn't mean other sources should be neglected though. Especially if we're going to start dropping multiple strongholds in a year.

They can't really "fix" the "I don't like it part.." That said.... I do think they need to add a lot of decorations to the vendors. They haven't been updated in awhile. Update the crafting materials for the prefabs/fabricator parts and add a lot of decorations to the fabricator droids. The really cool stuff can still be in the cartel packs, but they need to offer some more/new stuff on this fabricator droids. All the parts take really old materials to craft and nothing higher than rank 7. They seem to be putting a renewed focus on strongholds, so now's a good time to add to the decorations available that don't require millions of credits.

That's an option, but not a great one. They don't bother to customize the hook layout options in each stronghold. The centerpiece can be broken down into the same generic layouts that every centerpiece can. The problem with that is that it doesn't give you a ton of "good" options to design a room around. The other problem is the remaining hooks in the room (not the centerpiece or it's other layouts) are clearly designed around a center piece hook in the middle. There are a lot of places you'd want to place something, but there simply isn't a hook in range. I agree having a centerpiece hook as an option is good, but they should have customized the other hook options instead of giving you the same 3-4 alternatives. Manaan turned out to be supremely disappointing for a rather long list of reasons. I hope the train turns out a lot better.

Yeah. I actually prefer it to play everytime. Or would like there to be an option to play it.

The idea has potential and I'm very interested in seeing some screenshots. That being said, I'm not expecting much after seeing Manaan. I really just want something big on Zakuul... say a copy of Vaylin's Palace from chapter 6 would be pretty awesome.

It does not Zakuul is likely the next one for reasons we can't discuss here

It isn't. There are people posting screenshots of the SH super zoomed out and with other glitches. They literally didn't even finish the back half of the buildings we can see. It just turns to nothing a few meters behind the walls to the rooftop garden. That's why you can't get to the starship hook. It's literally unfinished and they don't want you to see it.

The only "problem" here is that conquest and strongholds are still linked. It's stupid that one of the main complaints about a new stronghold is that there are too many possible decorations allowed. What? The more options the better. If you don't need them all to finish that's great, but for those who want more awesome. It's just stupid that you're incentivized as a player to fill a stronghold with crap just so a completely unrelated part of the game can be done more efficiently. Just boost the points earned in conquest by 150%, or whatever % they want, and completely end the link between the two.

You can't get to the starship hook for the same reason there is an invisible wall in the garden. They didn't bother to finish the back half of the island. Once you get past that little area with the subs it just goes all white. They can't let you up to the starship hook or you'd be able to see that. There are some other areas and structures that look like they might have originally intended us to be able to access. Either for cost/time reasons or design decisions they decided to just ship what we have now. Great feedback though. It's a pity all that might change is a few hook layouts. It would be great if they added to it in the future, but that's pretty unprecedented.

I think the worst part is the underwater area. It's a pretty small area made worse by the fact it's chopped into 3 rooms. The majority of the middle room is taken up by the seabed viewing area in the middle. It's a great view, but there needs to be a bigger room around it to decorate. The sides rooms are identical and very clearly designed around a centerpiece decoration. I'm not sure why though... the majority of centerpieces don't really even fit in the room. Especially with such a low ceiling. You can swap to other hook layouts, but they fit awkwardly in the room and the rest of the hooks are clearly designed with a centerpiece layout in mind. It makes it difficult to decorate the room. A nit-picky complaint, but the windows down in this area are kind of annoying. It's a great ocean view, but it's hard to enjoy with such narrow, spaced out windows. I wish they were more like the windows in the Kaas City apartment (without the rain effect). I'm okay with smaller strongholds, but I don't understand why you designed such a large compound and then restricted us to a very small area. If you wanted a small stronghold the Kaliyo apartment on Zakuul is often requested and probably would've fit better. In the open outside entrance area, and the hallway to the elevator, there are several small green hooks next to each other. You should probably be able swap at least some of those to medium narrow hooks. I also don't understand the location of the starship hook. It's inaccessible to the player and hard to even notice. It has other hook layout options, but it's painful/impossible to even see them enough to play with them. Last nit-picky thing. The windows for the rooftop garden are annoyingly blurry for something obviously meant to be an observation area. I like that I can see several submarine vehicles outside the left window, but why can't I get to them? The view from the garden area is just rooftops. You'd think a rooftop garden/patio area on an ocean palace would offer a view of the ocean. TL DR It's a disappointing stronghold for me. I'm sure there are plenty who like it, but for 8 million credits I was expecting a few more rooms and a slightly bigger/better laid out underwater area.

Very disappointed. I don't mind that it is small overall, but the rooms are too cramped and there aren't very many rooms. The underwater rooms especially. Like the two unlocked rooms down there are tiny... too small. Again it doesn't have to be Yavin or Tattooine sized. The rooms we do have feel really cramped and the hook options are weak at best. Definitely need more hook options... Shouldn't there be a few other rooms as well? A bed room or something? The view from the rooftop garden is basically the roof of rooms you cant even access.... ***. You can't even put anything on the other side of the hedge wall. You also can't even get to the starship hook. I mentioned it in general chat and most people didn't realize there was a starship hook. The place looks so big in the pics, but turns out to be 2 rooms and a hallway.

I'd argue it's more muscle memory than carelessness. Let's be honest most people don't read very far into the patch notes if they read them at all.

Seriously. I've almost deleted sooooo many items and credits. Muscle memory is a thing! Why are you screwing with it

Not a tech guy at all, so I have no idea why it happens or what caused it. I just can remember when it used to happen on harbinger and that it seems to happen when the servers are busy. It happened in 3.0 and 4.0 before everyone quit. It stopped happening after that and it's happening again now that lots of people are back. Could be purely coincidence. I don't have any expertise here, but it's a pretty obvious correlation. I just wanted to point out this wasn't a new problem for Harbinger. It hasn't happened in awhile, but this isn't new.

Just for the record... this isn't a new thing. This used to happen early in 4.0 and during 3.0 as well. Harbinger has more players than it really should and whenever it gets busy it crashes and seems roll itself back. As people quit over the next couple months the issue will resolve itself. It would be nice if they fixed it now, but they didn't in the past... I wouldn't hold your breath this time either.

I don't frequent this particular forum that often, but I never really understood what the goal was in changing the pack at the launch of 4.0. Overall I was pretty happy with the way each shipment worked before these changes. I personally miss the faction reputation associated with each shipment and the chance to get cartel certificates. The certs had good value and felt better than getting a bronze item, but not quite as good as a gold item. The rep was something to "grind" and those vendors always had decent items to purchase. I DO like the chance cubes, but right now they drop way too frequently. Most people aren't buying these hypercrates to get old items. I want the items specific to this pack and they aren't dropping frequently enough right now. Keep the cubes in, they are kind of interesting, but lower the drop rate significantly. I feel like you had the best setup originally and every time you've made big adjustments since the changes have been disappointing.

I think there is a lot of talk about this conceptually, but I don't think it really reflects what is happening on live servers. By the time the Eternal Championship goes live people will have been farming gear for 5+ months. Most people are going to be at or near the peak of their chosen progression path. Raiders are going to be in mostly 224 with some 220. People who only do SM ops are going to be in 216 set with some 220 mixed in. People who don't want to engage in operations at all will have had 5 months of data crystal farming. You're not going to be able to create a gear incentive to raiders. The only gear incentive to the SM crowd is going to be 224 or 220 set pieces. The people who don't want to do any raiding will only be interested in optimized and set pieces. There is also the casual crowd who doesn't really care about gearing up. You probably won't be able to entice them with gear at all and honestly many of them won't be able to complete all 10 levels even if they did want the gear. If you want to reach the largest number of people for the longest time the reward probably needs to be a currency grind for cosmetic items. The problem with cosmetic items is that they can be really hit or miss. If you don't like the look or care about that type of reward there is no reason to ever repeat the content. You can ultimately still attach gear to the weekly reward as well. The level of the gear just depends on the target audience, but they do need to keep in mind people will have been on the gear treadmill for 5 months when this comes out. I've seen some talk about a gear bridge to group content and I'm not sure that's what we need really. The operation GF does this better than anything else ever could. Most of the ops are very easy and tuned to be completed by people in questing greens running around under max level. It drops optimized and set pieces.. you really can't offer a better gear bridge to group content than that. People who aren't doing group content at this point are people who probably aren't interested in it. Getting the gear to do HM operations is mostly a non-issue.

#Subtlebrag I don't know about the final number tuning, but I agree with the expectations of players. That level of awareness and mastery of your class abilities and how/when to use them should definitely be required for the 9th/10th boss. I don't see giving 220 gear as a big deal really. It's hardly rare anymore and players have had months to acquire the epic data crystals. 224 (or whatever the highest level of gear is after the update) should still be exclusive to operations. 220 is craftable and earnable through dailies and heroics and has been since October. Giving it as a reward once a week for clearing all 10 bosses isn't really that extreme. I feel like it needs to be set pieces to keep it rewarding week after week, but if you want to do optimized non-set pieces that could work. It's less rewarding, but it is out of reach for players who don't otherwise raid.

I think this is great if the idea is a one and done type deal. I'm assuming they want players to repeat this content weekly (hence the weekly quest) and if that is indeed the aim there needs to be a pretty strong gear incentive behind it. It could just be really easy content and the gear doesn't have to be good, but I think people will stop doing the content quickly. By the time this comes out in March? players will have been farming gear off the fleet vendors for nearly 5 months. If the development team wants people to run the Eternal Championship weekly if needs to offer either 224 gear or 216/220 set pieces. If you just put 200/208/216 non-set pieces in here what's the appeal to doing this weekly? It just depends on how long they want people to do this. The weaker the reward the less repeatable the content is.

I think the Eternal Championship offers a great opportunity to offer gear rewards to players who are unlikely to ever step into operations. If this just offers more of the same comm gear most players probably won't be able to justify the time investment for gear that they can farm easily through heroics/tacticals/flashpoints. Difficulty: The first 3 levels should be pretty easy. Like impossible to fail easy. 4 and 5 should ramp up the difficulty a bit, but nothing drastic. Standing in things hurts a little, not interrupting hurts a little, but your companion is probably going to still carry you through it. I think the next quest should require clearing 6-8. 6 should be a slight, but noticeable, increase from 5. Spatial awareness should matter, but not outright kill you. Interrupting should be encouraged, but again not ultimately deadly. 7 and 8 Should again be slight, but noticeable increases. Things hurt more and interrupting is more important. Possibly introduce the concept of an enrage timer. Maybe the ability that requires interrupting isn't damage related, but a big heal. Missing it once won't cause you to fail, but multiple times will result in the boss enraging and the player dying. Spatial awareness should continue to be important and damage should ramp up while the enrage decreases. The tuning should be somewhere in the SM OPs range. 9-10 Should start introducing new mechanics and concepts and continue to have an enrage timer. You should require interrupts and spatial awareness. You should probably also encourage the player to use personal defensive cooldowns. It should also require the use of stuns/disorients to stop abilities that are not interruptable with the traditional interrupt. If you want to get really fancy it should also require the player to "use" the arena. Perhaps dragging the boss to a certain location to stop an attack, or using LoS. Maybe the crowd/boss throws a bomb or stun grenade and you need to realize it and use it against him in a short period of time. This is a great opportunity to help players learn more advanced concepts. Rewards 1-5: This is pretty easy content and the reward shouldn't be earth shattering, but good enough to merit repeating it weekly. I feel 208 or 216 non-set gear with good mods/enhancements (low endurance, higher secondary stats) is appropriate. 6-8: This is, or should be, a noticeable step up in difficulty. The reward should reflect that as well. I think awarding 216 set pieces is justified. You already hand these out in SM OPS, and the players who are going to repeat this content weekly are probably not going to step into raiding, but have likely done enough heroics/dailies to gear up with comm gear. If you want this to be content that people repeat for awhile it needs to offer a good reward. Randomize the piece awarded each week or let them choose. 9-10: If this is as hard as it should be I think you can safely reward 220 set pieces. It's one item a week, it's not the highest possible loot level, but it still offers a strong incentive to repeat this content weekly. You'll still get better gear, faster, in operations. This isn't going to be completed by everyone. You can already buy/craft 220 gear so offering non-set pieces will make this content unrewarding somewhat quickly. Incentive and difficulty need to be balanced if you want this repeated for awhile. You can get lots of non-set pieces elsewhere in the game for less effort. I think you need to offer set items for this to have long-term replayability. Unique titles, mounts, decorations are also important. If there isn't a big statue decoration for completing this BB-8 will cry.

Harbinger Radar Tower Advanced Black-Red Eviscerating Crystal Advanced Black-Blue Eviscerating Crystal Advanced Green Eviscerating Crystal Farium Doonium Trimantium Advanced Critical Augment 40 Advanced Alacrity Augment 40 Turret (Large) updated

Yeah, this has been an issue since early December. It seems what can/can't be searched for changes all the time. I couldn't search for any of the new decorations for over a week, but they did a server restart and I could search for everything but the radar tower. After the latest round of server issues I can't search for a ton of things including most of what you mentioned and a few others.