Generally that stuff comes from missions.

I just looked up and saw a Search feature! When did that happen? Of course I did a Search on "Search" to see if there was a previous thread on this and it turned up nothing. Hmmm....

Obviously, they intended for crafters to only have a couple of purple items to sell, so that different crafters would be selling different purples. Other than for brief moments, I haven't been frustrated. I've just accepted - for now - that I can't make purples. I haven't really actually "had to have them" yet. I accidently REed one gear to Purple. But, I've found it has a material that it is a rare gemstone. I've only been able to find the materials to make it ONCE. That's a bit frustrating but I got over it. By the time I gather enough materials to make enough of them to sell, I'll be too high level to care about making it anymore. Anyway, I don't really have much problem getting blues so far. I have come to accept their are a few items that are broke and you'll never get blues on them. But I've successfully made blues on almost all my gear. So, I don't mind that RE is completly random so much. I've just come to accept it. Now, if I ever get around to trying to sell the stuff instead of just equipming myself, I may get frustrated that I can't get purples, but I'm not "there" yet.

I imagine they wanted to keep people from selling them to low level characters. That would make it a high level piece of gear that you have to work towards. The game has to provide rewards for gaining levels. Interestingly enough, I sell 11th level orange gear, but I sell it at prices that you would really have to be 25th or above to afford. Presumably, this is because everyone power leveled to 50 and now has a huge pile of credits to equip their new alts with. So some of the low level orange gear becomes "higher level" gear because of it's price.

Oh. And after my novel that I just wrote, I wanted to add: I was real excited about getting my first hoverbike for my 25th level sage. I had my 15th level Cybertech craft until I got the schematic for it. Then I got the ridiculous amount of materials necessary to make the thing and made my first one. Guess it's my last one. It binds to the crafter instantly. So, you can't sell them and you can't give them away. My crafter is 15th level. Even the ONE that I made is useless to me for about 10 more levels. I can't make one for the character that needs one. And that means you CERTAINLY can't sell them. What exactly is the point of having them in the game when you can't make them for anyone except your Cybertech. If your current character doesn't have the Cybertech skill, that character can never make one. So, only 1 out of 4 characters can make them at all, they are very expensive to make (probably more than just going and buying one from the vendors), and the few characters that make them can't sell them or even give them away to anyone. What's the point?

My highest level is 30th and my crafting levels (in all crafts) are about 140 or so. Cybertech has really been the only one I've found necessary so far. It's the only way you can get Grade 2 ship armor, other than the GTN where everybody (including myself) charge outrageous prices for it. (The reason I charge outrageous prices for it - more than Grade 3 armor - is that the material cost more than Grade 3 armor on the GTN. The only way I stay profitable is either to catch them on the occasional sale or gather them myself, which hasn't been exactly an easy task). Biotech seems kind of interesting to me, but honestly I really haven't used any of the biotech stuff I've created so far. I use stims and med packs that are dropped by the mobs. I haven't really compared those to the ones created by biotech, but they would only be useful to me if they are more powerful, because the only time I use one is for a boss battle that I'm attempting solo. In a group - so far, I haven't ever felt I needed to use a stim or medpac. I've never even come close to running out of them because the mobs drop about 8 times more than I use. My biotech crafting is still fairly low level. So maybe I just need to experiment a bit more. The cool down time is one reason that I don't use medpacs. You only get one per fight and they aren't usually all that effective unless you just need a couple of hit points to finish the battle. Anyway, as a player, I don't find myself thinking "I need to go buy some bio stuff. That would really help me." And I imagine a lot of other people aren't thinking they need to go buy that stuff either. I've mostly found myself crafting mods for myself. Light saber and orange clothing mods are really the only thing, other than ship armor that really make me glad I have the crafting skills for. That's largely because the prices for that stuff on the GTN are just absolutely insane. The prices on the GTN suggest that you should go farm grey mobs for a couple of days, just so that you can buy the equipment to reach the next level. I mean, to fully outfit a character using mods off the GTN costs more than my characters make and I'm even probably more wealthy than a lot of characters. As I listen to myself talk, I am realising I need to go start selling some of my mods. So far I've pretty much just been making them for myself and REing them to get blues, so that I can set myself up with complete sets of blue. I haven't been able to make Purple yet. I "accidently" got one Purple Schematic a couple weeks ago, when I REed a blue that I no longer needed. I was pretty excited that I got a purple. It's level 13 gear, which is just about the right level for people who are buying their first gear off the GTN. In the past couple of weeks I've been able to make ONE and that was for myself. My characters, alone, could use about 18 of them before I would start selling them on the GTN. The problem is that one of the materials is a rare gemstone. I've spent a couple of days trying to send my characters on missions to get that gemstone and not a single mission has returned it. I think you have to get it as a critical result and maybe my companion affection is not high enough (but come on! It's a level 13 item. How high does my companion affection have to be?) And it looks like everone else is facing the same issue because I don't see this purple item for sale on the GTN ever. And the rare gemstone is something that I always keep my eye open for on the GTN and I've never seen that material for sale on the GTN ever. So that's a big part of the reason I haven't felt like it's worth it to try and craft any purples. My theory on why the prices are so jacked up is that most of the players power leveled to fiftyth level and now they have huge piles of credits with which to buy gear for their alts that they are now leveling up from low levels. That would explain how people are able to afford the gear that I make, because most of what I sell is like the Grade 2 ship armor that I sell at prices above Grade 3 ship armor. Obviously that means that someone that is Grade 2 level has more than enough money to afford equipment priced for someone who is at least 10 levels higher than the character buying it. All I know is that people buy it when I price it at that level. I myself, craft it for myself so that I don't have to pay those ridiculous prices. I've also noticed that I'm not really impressed with Synthweaving. As a player, I'm mostly only interested in Orange gear. I have even been known to wear low level gear because it looks good on my character, rather than wear something I hate because it improves my characters' stats. So, finding at least one suit of orange gear that I like is imperative to me. I generally try to collect a whole wardrobe of orange gear. However, some of the pieces (boots, gloves, and belts come to mind here) are hard to find as orange gear and I have my Synthweaver make those for my other characters. SINCE I have a Synthweaver outfiting my other characters, I would be willing to have them wear my Synthweaver's gear. But the problem is that Sythweavers only make about 1 outfit every 10 levels and you need to replace your gear about every 3 levels or so. So, I end up quickly replacing any of the gear my synthweaver makes with drops from mobs, or better yet, go to orange gear which can be upgraded when I need it to be upgraded. Armormech and Armstech tend to only outfit my smugglers and troopers which are all still below 15th level. So, I haven't experimented with those much. At the levels that I am at with those characters, I'm not sure you need tor really buy gear. What you get off the mobs is probably enough to keep winning the fights. And that all goes back to what I was saying about lack of demand for crafted gear.

I've been doing just this; I have low level alts supplying a level 30. The problem you run into is companion affection. The low level means low companion affection. So it takes an hour to make a couple greens. forget about blues.

I agree with the OP. In the history of MMORPGs, going all the way back to MUDs, the concept was to create a "world" more than creating a "game". The original EQ still had some of that in the early days. Every since then, MMORPGs have moved further and further away from the "this is a world and the possibilities of what you can do are nearly limitless" type sandbox game, towards a game that is "just" about walking around killing stuff. In the original EQ every class was completly different and played completly different. I looked forward to the non-combat abilities of the Wizard class back then, such as teleport, wizard eye, invisibility and others. One of several reasons I quit the game after a year was that I felt like I had already seen all the non-combat spells. Anyway, since then all classes - including wizards - have just been about combat. Crafting, also, was something to do for people who didn't want to spend their time in combat. The combat in MMORPGs has always been some of the least satisfying parts of the game. Unfortunately, most game designers consider that the "only" important thing in the game. Hense the reason I haven't played a lot of MMORPGs since the original EQ. I've got one character that I'm trying to level as quickly as possible, to get the Legacy name for my other characters. So, I've been avoiding side quests (which I look forward to doing with the other characters and don't want to spoil anyway) and just trying to grind levels as quickly as possible. I'm finding the game is MUCH less satisfying when most of what I do is just combat. Without the story line in this game, I think there is a good chance I would get bored enough to stop playing. That being said. I think SWTOR has done the best job with questing (the story line) of any MMORPG that I've ever seen. And overall, I'm still enjoying playing it after over a month, and - more importantly - I think I'll still be enjoying it half a year from now or more. But I "do" have to admit that I think it would be 1000 times better if it were more of a sandbox game. And I would also admit that I think the choices in the stories really don't make much of a difference other than light side and dark side and companion affection.

OP needs to edit the original post about gathering at level one. They changed that a couple of weeks ago. You cannot get to Fleet at level one and therefore cannot gather that early. I created a charcter and specifically tried to get to Fleet as soon as possible from Tython. I recieved my companion at level 7 and that was when I was able to take the shuttle to Fleet, not a minute sooner. At level 7, I think I could learn any of the crew skills and chose all gathering skills. I still couldn't learn my advanced class until 10th and couldn't use/buy a light saber until I got my first one in the class quest. I don't think it gave me a huge advantage by starting gathering at level 7. I don't think there was that much in the way of low level nodes to harvest, but I wasn't particularly looking very hard for them.' Also, if you get to Fleet at low level you have access to your ship's cargo hold even though you will be around 15th or 16th level before you get your ship (this seems pretty much unavoidable since you need to be this high level to finish the class quest that gets the ship unless you have someone higher level helping you through).

I don't like most of the initial companions. T7 and Kira are the only two I really like, and both of them are for the JK. Over time, most of the others have grown to the point that I can tolerate them. What's his name (Thane?) is new to me; I can't stand him at this point and he's going to be confined to the ship. Good thing I've gotten more accustomed to Qyzen. I wish they had of just let us customize our companion. Then I could have been happy with just one outside of the advantage of sending them off on multiple missions. Also, I wouldn't be seeing Corso around every corner.

I'm going to rebind mine to chat page bottom. I keep hitting it accidently and have it pop up in my face where I can't see anything, sometimes in combat. And then it's a major pain to tell it to go away. It's not like I want to use it every day or even every week.

They've pretty much always had a light population in the middle of the night. Plus, there was some pretty severe population imbalance at first. People have problem created alts on other servers or otherwise moved to other servers and balanced it out a bit more.

I can't imagine the game designers didn't at least consider mobs spawning based on your abilities. That's basically game design 101. I would have to think they considered it and decided not to do it for some reason. But you are right, I'm annoyed by the railroad track/theme-park they've got us on. An MMORPG should be a "world", and not a theme park. So, you should really be able to go at least most places and get content appropriate for your level.

Besides, I think most people just want to play and are happy to join any group they can get. And more than that, these days I think a lot of people don't WANT any one to lead. They want it to be a democracy.

Look, I'm not the most experienced at MMOs and my highest level character is 20th. But a "group" in this game is often 2 people and their companions. (Although I found my companion to be a little buggy and unreliable; so, I generally try to find 4 people.) Still, if you are LFG then you are looking to form a group by definition. I totally disagree that if you form the group you are the group leader. Not everyone's a leader. I like leading, but I'm not coleric enough to bully my way into being the leader. And more importantly, I'm in experienced and wouldn't necessarily know how to lead a group in this game. I've formed quite a few groups. And I just let who ever falls into the leadership position in that group do the job. I haven't heard any complaints on that. Just because you are the one that forms the group doesn't mean you are a competent leader and I think everyone knows that. So, I think the real expectation is that whoever is best at doing it will. But if you are really worried that people are going to have a problem with you forming a group and then expecting someone else to lead then I would suggest doing what other posters have mention. LTJ (Look To Join). There's even a LFG menu in the game where you can put in the notes that you do NOT want to lead. Perhaps it's someone else's fault if they don't read it. I just can't imagine someone having a problem with you not wanting to lead a group that you formed. Basically, you're probably going to get someone who is Sanguine or Coleric that will push you out of the way and assume the leadership whether you want them to or not (and especially in the case of Coleric, whether they are competent or not), or you're going to get someone who is Phlagmatic or Meloncoly and will follow pretty much anyone or doesn't particularly want the group to HAVE a "leader". Although I'm Meloncoly and would jump into the leadership position myself if I felt I knew what I was actually doing. Meloncoly just tends to want the best person for the job to do it, or no one to do it - if no one is competent. Besides, unless you are really up-tight, I'm not sure the group actually needs much of a leader. Sure, you may have to shout "LFM" a couple of times until you get enough people. But other then that, most of the groups I've been in were either leaderless or - once or twice - run by an incompetent jerk. Maybe I'm crazy, but I thought the idea was to have fun, and I'm not sure that really requires a leader. But, if you are running through FPs that require serious co-ordination and don't want to be responsible for it, I'd have to say LTJ. Then no one can fault you for not leading.

Ditto. It DEFINATELY charges you if you cancel. But, I'm pretty sure you get the money back if you sell the item or it expries. I think the whole point is to prevent you from putting too many items on the market at once and also to keep you from being fickle with your prices and constantly changing them. Once you commit to a price, you might as well stick with it, because small changes will just lose your deposit and end up losing you money. That might be to keep players from getting into ugly bidding wars where they keep changing their prices by a single credit. Whatever the purpose, it's obvious they wanted you to post an item and leave it at that price for a day or two. It's expensive to cancel/change your mind. But I think it's primarily a matter of keeping you from putting too many items on the market at once. I am limited to just a hand full of items when the deposits for those items are equal to my spending money.

I agree that you can't because it would ruin artifice. But I also agree that it was an absolutely worthless "gift" for pre-order. Hardly any of the bonus gifts that you received for paying more or paying early were worthwhile. That's why I didn't go for the collectors' edition or anything like that.

Absolutely agree OP.

Oh. For the newbies, I should add that one of the reasons people get overly irrate about "need"ing on stuff your main character can't use is because some of the best items "bind on pickup", which means if you get it, you can't make it right by giving it back to someone else. Basically, both of you would have to re-run the whole mission several times to get another shot at it. So, just be aware of that. Not to mention, it's REALLY disappointing to see someone else get that one piece of gear that you've run through the mission 6 times to get, EVEN IF THEY GET IT FAIRLY. So, it's just that much more difficult if they break the "gentlemans' rules" and take it for a companion or something.

Oh. And people should just EXPECT that a lot of the people running the Esseles mission have never seen an MMO before. It's the first real group mission of the game. There are a couple on the starting worlds, but you can probably solo them if you get high enough level and have your companion. I think that's what I did about half the time. More importantly, I think it's the first mission of the game where people are actually concerned about getting specific loot. Esseles drops good enough stuff that I eventually learned to go back and run it with my characters that are almost too high level to run it, just to get the oranges that drop. Oh, and now days, I just announce any special plans I have the minute the group forms. If I'm there for a specific item, I announce it. If I were wanting gear for my companion, I would announce it. Then they can boot me before it gets started or I can drop if they have a problem with it and find a group that doesn't care.

Yep. I'm not sure I've ever played an MMO that had this Need/Greed in it. Of course, I haven't really played an MMO since EQ One. Coming right out of the newbie area, I ran the Esseles quest with some people who were probably friends in real life, because the leader was an obviously immature jerk and yet the others didn't seem to mind. I did "Need" for a companion and they threw a fit. I hadn't really thought about it and I even offered to give the loot to the person that they said it should have gone to, although she refused it when I did. But they chewed my out something serious when I really didn't realize I had made an offense. Then later an item came up that was a Jedi item and I "needed" it thinking I could use it. Keep in mind that these items were pretty much the only thing I didn't hit "greed" on all the way through Esseles. Apparently, the item was for a Jedi Knight and I was a Consular, although I hadn't played the game long enough to know that there was a difference equipment wise. They just immediately dropped me from the group without any discussion, and hurled insults at me. It doesn't really matter anyway; I mean, who wants to game with immature jerks like that. Anyway, yep, some people get really irrate if you hit "Need" on anything that you may not be able to use yourself. If you want to "need" for your companion. Just ask the group that you're with; they are the only opinion that counts. Once someone asked if she could "need" for her companion and I told her "yes", that I was really only looking for a certain item. Later it worked to my advantage when I wanted an item. So, communication is the key.

I agree that complexity is a big part of what makes games "fun". But you "really" have to ease people into it. Ideally, you would have many "levels" to the game where each gets progressively harder to learn. There "is" some of that here, but nothing that isn't completly typical for an MMO. Crafting for example, is an additional level that is not necessary to the main game, but can substantially add to the experience of the main game. Generally, once I "figure a game out" I stop playing; when I see the algorythms and pseudo-code, rather than feel like I'm in another world, I stop playing. That's one of the reasons I haven't played any MMO for more than a couple of months since I played the original EQ for a year every day. But everyone is on a different "level". This game has to be easy for kids to pick up, but at the same time sophisticated to entertain adults. But I guess the main reason you don't see more complexity is that it takes "vision" to imagine it and it take the money to finance it. Corporations that develop video games tend to lack "vision" because everything is designed by "committee" and they don't want to take risks that might not make profits for the shareholders. And they are probably trying to spend as little as they can to get those profits.

I agree that they should have made companions customizable. At the very least they could allow you to choose the display name, rather than "Bob's Companion". Changing the actual name would have been impossible due to the voice acting, but I think that's why they should have kept it to text rather than voice acting anyway. And one of the things that irritates me about this game is that all the companions pretty much look the same. I'm only 18th level on my highest lv character, but Qyzen doesn't even have an alternate appearance. T7 only has custom repaints. I don't like any of the Coursos and I don't know how many times I see him and Aric run by me every day with other people. Aric doesn't have an alternate looks. Kira is the only companion I even like. other than T-7, and I haven't got a customization option for her, but expect I probably won't like anything better than the default.

I had the exact same thought the last time I played, and I've only had my ship for less than a day. The needless running back and forth is downright "painful". But, I'm afraid it was intentional. I mean, seriously, you don't think the designers noticed how long it takes. It's a time sink to slow down your progress. Obviously. Either that or they are trying to discourage you from using your ship as a "home" and trying to encourage you to use the cantinas as your "home". I insist on using my ship as a "home", so it's always a long run just to get to the mail box. I'll be glad when I get a speeder. Any way, I have no doubt that the distance was completly intentional.

They probably should have included day night/cycles. It's one more example of how this game is not emersive at all, outside of the story line. But, I guess we miss the night cycles largely because we are used to them. I don't think they had day/night cycles in Mass Effect and I never really noticed they were missing. And most movies/stories generally take place in the day time. So, I guess they just decided not to do it. If the game were more emersive, I think it would be important. But, since it's basically just one big "Choose Your Own Adventure", I'm not sure that night time would add a "whole" lot.