I didn't play in Beta, but my understanding is these kinds of items are leftovers from early builds of the game. Aric was originally a cunning based sniper, then added a whole new class of aim based sniper rifles, then still later they gave him aim heavy armor and the same aim autocannon/blaster rifle proficiencies the soldier class does. Why did they do this? I have no idea. Aric's voice actor is the same that plays Garrus in the Mass effect series, a popular recurring alien companion that has a very similiar personality to Aric and is a sniper, so maybe they felt it was too similiar? Or maybe they just felt the military class had to all use the same easily handed-down boring gear, I dunno. Your next companion, Elora, the empirial medic also still starts off with a cunning based blaster when she like all the rest of your companions uses aim as her primary stat. Sometime shortly around release, the initial consular companion, changed from the same str based heavy armor and melee vibrosword gear that the inquisitor's starting companion does, to trooper style aim heavy armor and rather hard to find aim based tech swords. Things that seem pointless are leftovers from these early builds that never got cleaned up or changed, cunning autocannons, aim sniper rifles, I've looted str based heavy armor for level 1-3 that seems out of place as well. All of these are minor examples of what make this game seem rushed and unpolished or maybe just unfinished like all MMOs are near release, but are actually kind of trivial compared to some of the larger issues some people have, like the engine or UI.

There's 2 kinds of bugs I am aware of with all harvestable nodes, slicing, scavenging, and bioanalysis. 1) Node spawned under the world, not harvestable, shows up on your map/radar but not visible- these seem to reduce in number with every patch but are still fairly common. 2) Bugged node, my best guess caused when someone harvested it but did not actually claim the contents, bugging it out permanently until the server is reset. Couple ways this can happen- sending a companion to do the harvest while you run on ahead, get out of range after they complete the harvest process but before collecting the node and they warp back to you, you can manually return and loot the contents but log out or time the node out and it bugs. Going into combat as the harvest process completes. High latency/disconnects during the harvest process, etc It will get obnoxious for harvesters because usually the same type of nodes are grouped together in logical areas- slicing in industrial/commercial areas, bio in the wilds or landscaped areas, junk piles anywhere near wreckage or droids. So if you spend time in these areas looking for nodes you have the skill for, you start to see the same bugged out ones day after day. I agree, the higher populated areas, usually the 2nd and 3rd planets and the end game ones seem to have the highest concentration of the 2nd type of bug.

People do that, usually park a character near the GTN and a mail box and just run skill missions, putting the products of those missions as well as the things their other characters out there in world have mailed that they don't need up for sale. It can be a modest profit originally that builds overtime. Whether that's more income then you would earn leveling the character, getting the loot along the way, increasing your companion count and number you can deploy at once thereby running more missions, faster with higher affection ratings or not is up to you. What I would do is level an advanced class you aren't sure about, if you don't like it or are no longer having fun with it at any point, just semi retire it and let that be your trading character. That's what I did with a consular, the horrendous voice acting, terrible story, and outright irritating companions you get with that class drove mine into retirement.

Staying near the target level for the quests and things you are fighting seems key to maintaining a consistent pace of progression in SWTOR. If you religiously clear all side quests and bonus quests you will out level areas- even entire planets or series of optional content: flashpoints/space missions. Earn some badges in a daily PvP warzone or do the extra bonus series quests that appear after completing the class quests of midlevel and up planets on top of that and now things are borderline greyed out in the next area. This is a good "problem" to have, lots of choices in how and what content you do to progress, most MMOs have the opposite problem of only one very linear grind to follow. A good early example for Republic/Empire players is their capital planets. If you do all content there including heroics (perhaps even twice or more over multiple days) then get your ship do the initial space missions, I guarantee you will have trivialized the hundred or more activities and combat Xp gains you would receive in Taris/Balmorra. For new players who don't want to miss things, the storylines are the best feature of this game afterall, you will encounter this constantly. Leading to slow dull slogs through 'green/grey' minimal xp content. For people on their 2nd or 3rd you learn that all content short of the class quests is entirely optional. But It is very feasible to just do the class quests to unlock features and companions and level entirely via PvP or repeated FPs. Do your best to keep both your own and your favored companion's gear up to date and feel free to move on to new areas and abandon trivial missions from your log.

Gotta say the 1 handed saber style looks best in my opinion. Dual wield looks awkward at best, in particular I think the Sith saber animations are much more clumsy compared to the Jedi versions but it's in character: an angry guy chopping wood or skulls vs a centered 'anime' inspired samurai swordfighting style. Or to put it another sith melee animations involve a lot of roundhouse haymaker style swinging while the Jedi look like professional if overly dramatic duelists. I'd say the reverse is also true that force power animations strongly favor the sith over the Jedi, everyone likes force lightning/choking more then rocks and wavy line effects.

My opinion but almost all the male sith pure blood faces looked awful. You either look like you dipped your face in acid and your flesh is melting or you have a kind creepy drunk stalker leer. Add the jewelry and you really start to look simply "fabulous!" The female faces I thought were a lot more menacing maybe because they had some basic symetry and lacked the melted look, jewelry looked more in character. Whether m/f both have as their last choice for eye color this really vivid yellow color that I think looks awesome. I dunno either way I would stick to body type 1 or 3, so you look as inhuman as possible. I have alt syndrome but one of my favorite characters is a DS female anorexic body 1 pureblood inquistor, think the voice actor for that class is amazing and pulls off the whole sinister psycho vibe really well.

I experienced similar issues with the republic dancer/Slave girl social clothing sets. One thing to keep in mind is that the republic (red) version is just a minor palette swap version of the slave girl (pink or purple). So if you are mixing them together it may cause some graphical issues outside of the high res conversation only textures. There are many issues on the low/med textures- clipping, not displaying (purple blank mesh appearance) the one most Jedi & sith notice is the "bubble butt" syndrome with robes. Yes, another issue that only shows up in low/med res, conversation and the preview window do not show this error. There is no fix that can be done by players for this but future patches and graphic card driver updates should address it. (very unlikely bioware will ever allow high res textures to be fully enabled, developer posts here admitted it simply overwhelms their dated engine) I just want to mention 2 more issues with these clothing sets that bug me: 1) the empire dancer outfit is an actual differently textured appearance that is quite unique, why no similar treatment w/ republic version? 2) all 3 costumes remove an entire overlay of textures outside of high res, instead of a simplified view that is less demanding to render in crowds, you basically are seen in a bra and panties using these. That's probably an improvement for some but it just struck me as particularly odd that it's only these items that have such a radically simplified view.

Others have pointed out that it is most likely the lack of a skin texture to be shown when you put her in that outfit. I just want to bring up another issue I have noticed personally with the slave girl outfit and the imperial dancer or republic dancer versions (republic one is just a minor palette swap of the slave girl if you haven't seen, again the repubs get screwed over). The chest piece's "loincloth" that should hang roughly from the waist to the knees does not appear for any player or companion that I am aware of, no matter your grpahic setttings, however it will show up almost always when in conversations when the higher resolution textures are used. So you have a basically a bikini bottom with no covering. That's probably an improvement in some peoples' opinion but looks nuts when you go into conversations and suddenly are wearing different "pants". I am told this is a related bug with the inflated rear end on sith/jedi robes, and many of the clipping issues people notice with other armor and social clothing.

I am just getting started in SWTOR, highest skill is 154 synth so I have no opinion about how crafting stands at end game. I agree it would make logical sense to have armoring mods in these 2 crew skills. However I doubt they would make a change like this, as the mods seem to be so widely available as token rewards already or without adding an entire new and unnecessary class of items to cyber tech in compensation. Needing an armor mech and a cybertech's products to create your complete outfit is the only example I am aware of in SWTOR's crafting system that creates interdependence. That combination of multiple characters efforts seems to be what this system lacks most. With the crafted custom gear there only needed to be a future role for the armor/synth products as you level. I would like to see the crafted gear items made at least better then quest rewards. Perhaps crafted gear could have a single aug slot standard with an additional slot the result of a "critical" result. It would create demand for the augs that many seem to ignore while leveling, perhaps add unique armor and Synth craftable augs in the future.