/Signed. I personally don't mind the way the system is working now, but it IS flawed and the decline in pvp population is already noticeable in the longer queue times. I honestly have no problem having all players be equally geared either, because then it just boils down to skill. Excellent work OP.

Yeah but see that's the problem. It's not unlimited f2p access because there's only at most 5 PTS up at any given time if my proposal is followed. With the shear quantity of people trying to get freebies, those queues are gonna be maxed constantly. This of course is no problem for subscribers because there is a cap on F2P players per server (see: proposed 50% pop). The sub buys you a stable live server that does not risk being wiped at random interval while being constantly down for testing patches and loads of newly introduced bugs.

Thanks for the +1. The F2P PTS changes are very different and I think a lot of people will probably just see the word F2P and get their pitchforks out without actually reading what is described. If it became enough of a problem where subscribers could never manage to get onto the 50/50 population PTS, they could drop it down to 4 50/50 or add a 6th for subscribers only. Thanks for the feedback! I would like to know what you have against compensating the players to help drive focused tests. I mean with my proposals the player who dedicates an entire month towards testing actively only receives 2 days of game time and/or a title. Is it really that bad to reward the players with something? Oh and please don't spout that "A better game" nonsense everyone else seems to think is adequate reward for testing. People in beta used to just spew that garbage everywhere yet here we are post launch and a lot of the issues brought up there are still broken. Sad truth is that people don't want to pay $15 a month to beta test a game. I would also like to know what you have against people being allowed to play the game for free if forced to submit feedback via a QA/Beta style build that suspends player accounts who don't provide solid feedback proportionate to their playtime...

[Preface] So I know there are already a million threads bringing up a lot of good points, and no, I did not take the time to read every single one of them, I just decided to get my thoughts down on paper and try and make a difference rather than get stuck reading for all eternity. With that said, if you posted some of these ideas already, yay. I don’t want any credit for this I just want the game to be better. Also, some of these ideas are a bit radical and will probably take a lot of work to implement but I personally think they can make a huge difference to the future outcome of the game. [Problem] As stated by Stephen Reid on 02.08.2012 01:26 PM : [Proposed Ideas for Solution]: [Communication] The dev team started off great when the game first launched in terms of communication. However, it seems that as time has gone on the communication level has dropped dramatically. I personally tie this to the massive backlash from the community towards a few dev posts that probably should’ve been reviewed before dropping them on the community. However, I don’t think the solution is to now tuck tail and hide. The devs & the community need to be permanently engaged in a flowing dialog or neither side will be successful in accomplishing what needs to be done to make this game succeed. On top of this, I am starting to see an increasingly depressing trend of making undocumented changes to the game. This is a great source of frustration to the community and needs to be addressed immediately. Patch notes should be extremely in depth and include raw numbers for % changes as well as what things were before and after the change, not just what it will be. I have some things the devs can do to further increase the transparency of the dev process with the community listed below: [Directed Tests] The PTS team really needs to have a much clearer system for what things they want players to be focusing on. It’s quite obvious that what’s going on right now is not really working out, which a lot of the problem may not be related to direction but having this base covered won’t hurt either. [Feedback Tools] Some tools can be implemented to further aid the feedback process. Devs: .:[Active work] An active publicly visible database of fixes should be added to the development section of the website. This database can be separate from the in-house systems being used but for the purposes of visibility the community would LOVE to know what the team fixing things is actually working on. To aid in the server load on the website, it would probably be best to only display what is currently being focused on [5-6 key items] and also display what the team has already finished. Example(These are fictional tasks, take with grain of salt): .::Active Initiatives: [Date Updated][Description][status] [02/08/2012][uI: Cooldown Animation Improvements][in Development] [02/02/2012][Make PvP Gear Fully Moddable][Pending PTS Deployment] [01/30/2012][Give Rhythm Augmentation Droid His Groove Back][*On PTS*] [01/15/2012][Make Ilum Less Fun][Deployed 1.1.0] … … The items listed as *ON PTS* will be the items used for the ingame feedback additions listed below. They will also be announced to any player logging into the PTS as part of the welcome message or a pop-up “Test Focus” window. Player Side: Adding a system to the current CS Ticket system on the PTS that allows the player to select “Feedback” which will bring in an additional drop box to give feedback on one of the focus topics would allow for a simple collection of relevant data that the devs can peruse when they have time. In addition to this the exit survey from the beta should be reimplemented that will ask for feedback on one of the many focus items before the player logs out. [Character Copy] This is a huge hot-button item for people. Why it still has not been properly addressed is beyond me but we MUST have a form of character copy to move people who are level 50 to test on the server. There is a very tiny population willing to actively test instead of spending their time with their active paid subscription playing live. The subsection of that group that wants to level 1-50 while on a test server is even smaller. Without some way of bringing in the characters and classes we want to test right on over the lack of feedback will continue. -Disclaimer- PTS Character copy, for those who don’t understand this system, works like this: The SWTOR website introduces an interface to the player account management page. From this page the player can select a active character that they have on a live server and designate the system to make a carbon copy of this character onto the the PTS. This is a one way process and all progress made on the PTS has no impact on live servers. [subscriber Incentive] The last thing people really need is more incentive, this game is already pretty easy, but if candy is available, people WILL go for it... I suggest the following: -Players who give solid feedback on at least 5 active test subjects per week get a Tester point. -Players who get 4 tester points get a free 2 days of game time. -Players who reach x amount of tester points have their accounts granted a “Founder Medal” type item to grant them a spiffy title. (like “Revanite” the devs will understand this even if the community does not) -Maybe eventually give more rewards for significant contributions to the test community [F2P PTS] :Puts on flak jacket: This is gonna get nasty... I propose that you make the following changes (AFTER IMPLEMENTING PTS CHAR COPY!) - Add more PT Servers. (Ideally at least 5 active servers) - PTS Population gets capped at 50% Subscribers. - Second 50% is open for Free To Play Players (yeah I said it). - F2P PTS Players are required to submit feedback via the tools described above. - F2P-Players who do not provide feedback receive a 1 week suspension from PTS cluster. Example: F2P-1: Submits full sets of feedback, is allowed to continue playing. F2P-2: Plays 100 hours and submits nothing, Suspended. I leave the thresholds of required feedback up to the devs. This would maximize the player test population and vastly increase the feedback being generated. While yes some players will do what they can to get free game time, with only 5 servers on the test group, the queue times will be massive, so only those dedicated to testing will be sticking around. The PTS will also be less stable than live servers due to the ever changing state of the builds there so F2Pers will have to deal with that as well. The 50% F2P cap also prevents F2P Players from inhibiting the active playing communities ability to test thing they are concerned about. This is also a great marketing tool to get people hooked on the game! Many birds, one orbital cannon! [TLDR] - Communication Improvement from devs. - Better directed test. - Feedback tools for Devs and Players - Character Copy. - Subscriber incentive to test. - F2P PTS.(Probably Least likely to ever happen) - A better game for you and me. Thanks for reading!

anyone else having a problem republic players are making it to the door and planting without ever becoming visible? Just tonight had a trooper (who can't even stealth lol ***?) a smuggler and a consular do this and it's getting really annoying... I think our server might just need a reboot or something...

They did not cause me any FPS hit at the time they were present in the game during the beta. The game looked effing gorgeous at that time too, i was so impressed when they finally turned them on I couldn't believe it was the same game tbh. Now everything is just dull and muddy again and for no good reason. Anyone believing that load of BS they just posted about additional draw calls hindering performance in relation to high resolution textures is just another blind follower being lead by a seemingly blind leader... Either that or their render engine infrastructure is designed so piss-poorly that the inclusion of said textures really is causing a significant hit, at which point i say, hire a better engine team because epic fail...

Yeah uh... I know I'm no render engine "expert" by any means but everything that I've ever worked on has never had any change in the quantity of "Draw Calls" to a texture just for it being higher resolution. High Resolution textures are just simply texture files that are of a higher quality. IE: Medium Player Example Texture A = .5MB in size, High Player Example Texture A = 1.0MB in size. So yes while this will cause any shader/post-process effects to take longer due to pixel shaders hitting more pixels on the texture image itself, there is nothing inherently "super mega intensive" that would cause high end machines to chug on this. High end graphics cards are specifically designed to handle this type of work so /shrug. Now, if you are grouping a bunch of higher quality render settings together tied with the high resolution textures that also include additional special post process effects and other fancyness to make things look "omg amazing" then yes I can understand why there would be more draw calls. Simply uncouple all these options and allow players to use the high res textures at their own peril. Throw a red text warning on the UI letting players know that a massive quantity of video memory is required for HD textures and be done with it. If they can't run it on their machine, too bad, drop down...

My brain can't repel derp of this magnitude... I love seeing all these rere's ***** at people for wanting raid quality gear without raid mats... It's obvious many of the people in this thread have no clue what is going on and should just stop trolling the crafting forums. Here's the cliff-notes version since it's obvious some people have no reading comprehension skills whatsoever... 400 Crafting items = Useless, Even at epic quality. Example: Artifice->Max level Might hilt 22... Belsavis Dailies->Might hilt 23... Crafters don't want raid gear without raiding, they want Gear that isn't dust under the rug after you gain access to late game daily quests... "Why be forced to hardmode flashpoints or Operations to make gear that no one is going to want anyway?" If you could at least RE the daily rewards to gain the schematic it would at least "slightly" make sense but that's not the case. I apologize for bringing some semblance of logic to this thread though... flames inc...