As someone already pointed out but got ignored, I'll repeat it in TL;DR: The OP's results are WRONG! He forgot: to include the base damage of abilities, which even at current BoS gear still makes up for most of the total damage, and which is also subject to crit. to include proc-mechanics, which are usually triggered by crits and make up for quite a bit of extra damage/healing. to include all the other talent related issues, like crit boni to some skills, which lower the value of more crit for those skills. If he'd done it properly, like others have already done, he'd have come to the conclusion that to optimally balance stats, you'd need to go with a matrix of stat weights, with results depending on overall gear level as well as spec - there are a few hard caps in this game (accuracy, i'm looking at you), a few spec depending soft caps (allacrity on lightning sorcs or arsenal mercs, for example), but all the other stats scale with each other, and if you stack one too high the value of even more of that stat drops below what you'd get by increasing secondaries. No hard and fast "bring that to 200 rating" kinds of rules for you, sorry. And if you really want to minmax, there's no way around a very complex spreadsheet to calculate stat weights. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people who'll actually take his post as "the truth" and will ignore all replies nor go look at the theorycraft forums where they'd actually find good answers ... and since this is on the official forums, it will spread in game. Good job, OP, you've done the game and the community a major disservice. 'Hope you see your mistakes, and either do the math correctly ... or at least edit it so people don't fall for it. Edit: arghhhh, ninja'ed. P.S.: if you really want to dive into theorycrafting, I'd really suggest to do so in an environment more suited for it, like the class or role forums here, or even better, one of the dedicated theorycrafting sites like mmo-mechanics. You'll find quite a few things to read up on, along with some spreadsheets in beta status

Correcing, as you ARE wrong 30% is the diminishing returns cap for both the contributions from crit rating and the contribution from main attribute, so the effective crit cap would be 65% before talents and buff Both contributions are on seperate diminishing returns and caps.

Let's be honest, this is not really a surprise, is it? Tell everyone that they can easily find groups now and do content, and people will believe it and jump right into ... without having a clue. Of course, the result will be that after a week or two, the decent players will either avoid the LFG or go full-elitist mode. Has been predicted since the LFG anouncement, and will invariably happen. Though you really got unlucky there, considering that BW gave EVERYONE a free suite of Recruit gear (rating 128(!), with some expertise, sure, but overall about the stats of level 49/50 crafted purples), but there seem to be some people who didn't even find that out yet, despite all the discussion in /1. Which, btw, is what I've seen and heard a lot - people in full Recruit all over the LFG. Btw: just because someone uses a couple pieces of PvP gear with his greens doesn't mean that's a PvPer! Most PvPers are actually at least decent in PvE, and usually geared far beyond what's necessary for HMs, thanks to the quite impressive stats on BM and WH gear ... hell, most of our guildies used PvP gear to gear up for PvE ops, simply because it was easier to get than Columni and offered about the same stats. No, those people with a couple PvP pieces thrown into their greens are ... what's the political correct term for "Scrubs"? ... well, that. Scrubs that got their one or two pieces by leeching warzones and being a pain for the PvPers, now ... now they have the LFG and are becoming a pain for PvEers, too, who could avoid them until now. Oh, and also: don't forget that it's pretty silly to ask for people to outgear the drops of the content. For early HMs, crafted level 49/50 purples or Recruit gear is totally fine, more than good enough to beat the instance and upgrade to Tionese/Columni from drops. Asking for people to outgear the instance doesn't make sense, unless you yourself are the problem that needs carrying ... and I'm pretty sure that was not what you were trying to say, right? Probably just some frustration that made you set your standards so high that they are scrub-proof ... which, oh surprise, was ALSO one of the things that was predicted to happen since LFG was announced Wait until you queue for LI HM or EC/KP SM, that's where you'll really get the /facepalm-moments Nothing really to see here, at least nothing that wasn't expected to happen.

Tell you a secret: Boring dailies are boring. Fun dailies are fun. No matter what planet Currently, this game only has boring dailies: kill X, click Y, kill Z more of X. Non-boring are usually done by having minigames, the more variety, the better, so that everyone can find a time-waster that he actually enjoys - because that's the real purpose of dailies: to make you stretch content by having replayable content in place. Fine. Necessary. But it has to be fun to work, not just a different scenery. Not that your idea is totally wrong, it'd probably be fun to travel from a Parsak game in Nar Shadar's casinos to Tatooine for a swoop race versus the local crime gangs to Voss where a mystic's ritual lets you literally chase ghosts to ... you get the drift, right? Minigames, fitting to the setting and the scenery and designed to be fun on their own. If that's the kind of dailies you're asking for, then I'll wholeheardedly agree this is something the game really needs. If you meant more "kill X, click Y, kill Z more of X" on every planet now ... please no!

Basics for most games: SLI/Crossfire only makes sense if you're going to spend at least 3k$ on your system, with top-end graphic cards linked. Preferably with three or more screens. In all other cases, you're better off spending your GPU budget on one faster card than on two or three slower ones. For SWTOR: This game, as already mentioned by the previous poster, is very heavy on CPU load, not so much on GPU. There's little to no difference between running a mid-end gaming GPU and running high-end or top-end GPU setups, while even a slight increase in CPU power will usually have a very noticable impact. That makes SLI/Crossfire a total waste unless you want to run a multi-screen setup. Other than that, there's very few games these days that won't work with SLI/Crossfire. Simply because there's no seperate effort to support it, that's taken care of by the current generation of DirectX and drivers just fine. Occasionally a bug or two prevent it from working, or, more often but still rare, from providing an increase in performance ... but those are temporary, until fixed with new driver updates.

Such a surprise, considering that the same post that the link came from said the page wouldn't go live until tuesday, june 12th ... which is tomorow We're all waiting for it, for all the same reasons you do. One more day

Repost: For all those complaining about precision jumps, here is Geek's Ultimate Guide to Jumping You think you know how to jump? "Just press spacebar, duh!" - see, you're WRONG! This game actually has a precision jump function that you need to practice, but once you got it, ALL datacrons involving platforming become very easy. DON'T: make running jumps, or for that matter, try to move and jump at the same time unless it's really required. DON'T: keep any keys pressed. INSTEAD: zoom in, look directly at where you want to jump, then tap spacebar and the forward key in quick succesion. Not at the same time, not too slow, and really just tap it - and suddely the game will make you precisely jump to the spot you wanted to go to. Practice with a simple box somewhere until you get it, then run through the datacrons thinking "How did I ever manage to fail at this?" Believe me, until I found out how jumping really works in this game, I was like you: screaming at the screen, cursing the devs for being sadistic monsters ... but then I found out that "I was doing it wrong!". And so are you, if you're complaining. Stop doing that! Start to do it right! And enjoy the success of getting each datacron on 1st attempt from now on.

For all those complaining about precision jumps, here is Geek's Ultimate Guide to Jumping You think you know how to jump? "Just press spacebar, duh!" - see, you're WRONG! This game actually has a precision jump function that you need to practice, but once you got it, ALL datacrons involving platforming become very easy. DON'T: make running jumps, or for that matter, try to move and jump at the same time unless it's really required. DON'T: keep any keys pressed. INSTEAD: zoom in, look dircetly at where you want to jump, then tap spacebar and the forward key in quick succesion. Not at the same time, not too slow, and really just tap it - and suddely the game will make you precisely jump to the spot you wanted to go to. Practice with a simple box somewhere until you get it, then run through the datacrons thinking "How did I ever manage to fail at this?" Believe me, until I found out how jumping really works in this game, I was like you: screaming at the screen, cursing the devs for being sadistic monsters ... but then I found out that "I was doing it wrong!". And so are you, if you're complaining. Stop doing that! Start to do it right! And enjoy the success of getting each datacron on 1st attempt from now on.

It's very easy to answer: If BW puts in a hard minimum in the LFG that's reflecting difficulty even somewhat accurately, people will mostly accept it, since asking for higher standards makes them look unable to carry their own weight and asking to get carried instead. If BW does NOT put in a minimum requirement, the community will do that instead. And that minimum will invariably be a lot higher, since people prefer smooth runs to hitting enrage timers or even wipefests ... and will be more guided by convenience and worst-case-PUG-baddy-scenarios than realistic requirements. That's basic social dynamics - laws of nature you won't be able to change or ignore. Just as it is a law of nature that there WILL be baddies, both geared and undergeared, and that there WILL be people trying to shortcut through progression by being carried. Personally I'd really prefer though if the system took care of at least the later, instead of having to be the mean "elitist" that tells people they're undergeared and a liability, having to argue with the carebear in the group that thinks the rest of the group is overgeared enough to carry anyone, and having to drop groups while leecheres just have to queue until they find a gullible group to get them their free epix. YMMV.

First names are NOT unique across servers. Stop spreading nonsense like that. And yes, I am 100% sure they are not, since I originally created characters on a couple of servers to choose one to play on, and have since re-rolled them onto my main server - using the excact same names, and without deleting the old ones. First names are unique for the server only, not cross-server. On topic: the situation is even worse than just dublicate names - lots of names are taken by accounts that are now inactive, and probably will never be active again. So when server transfers/merges actually make it into the game in the distant future, you'll not only be competing for names with other active players, but also with those people who reserved tons of names when early access hit but have since stopped playing forever. Yes, there'll be tons of unhappy people. But to solve it would require a major revamp of the legacy system and ingame functions, and I'd not bet on that being done anytime soon. Tough luck.

The probe can get bugged and stuck below the texture. 'had this happen to me twice, once after a failed attempt to solo it, once after acidentially pulling it while in the area. Both times I ran away, but got stuck in combat, and after a /stuck-death the probe was gone and wouldn't respawn until next maintenance. TL;DR: Known bug that's been around since launch, wait for a server reset to get another shot at it.

With either of those cards you'll probably capped by your CPU, not the GPU. My 460 OC runs the game acceptable on max settings, the 550 Ti has about the same performance at lower noise and power consumption, and the 560 is able to deliver even more power - again, if your CPU doesn't act as bottleneck, as SWTOR is very CPU heavy. Unless you to play other GPU-heavy games, the 550 TI would curently be my recommendation.

Actually, you're wrong. a) The hero engine is actually able to support 100k people on the same server b) Server hardware isn't a problem either, since a "server" isn't a single computer. Modern servers are virtual systems ran on clusters of computers that can be expanded at will, and it takes just the same hardware to house 1.7M players on a single shard as it takes to house them on a hundred shards. Though the server latency due to coordinating all the data would probably rise to borderline levels, but technically it IS quite possible. c) Client limitations are overcome by instancing. This is already done, and on Fatman you'll often see a second instance of the fleets. Yes, loading appearances for 250 players at the same time causes a temporary stutter, but once loaded it's quite playable on any mid-range gaming PC. You'd still need regional and playstyle shards, though. And, since I actually DO have a tourist alt on Fatman, i can agree with the OP: On Fatman, the game IS fun. My main server is among the top-poplulated european ones - which basically still means that you'll only see fleet reach 100+ players at prime time on weekends and holidays. Normally it feels just empty. And if I weren't in a guild that actually gets stuff done, I'd really consider rerolling to Freedon Nadd, which is the european Fatman. The difference when it comes to finding groups and waiting for pvp is just ridiculous. It doesn't have to be a single-shard-fits-all. But this game WOULD be a lot more fun if current Fatman would be the AVERAGE server - which would mean around a dozen servers max for each region (US West, US East, EU English/International, EU German/French, APAC, ...) For now I'll just enjoy my tourist alts on Fatman and Freedon Nadd when I feel like playing an MMO instead of a single player game with co-op mode provided by guild. It IS fun. Perhaps BW/EA gets the message before it's too late - I wouldn't bet on it though. In fact, with the recent anouncement that transfers won't happen before "early summer" (which basically means: July), I'd actually bet against them. Such a shame, such a waste ...

Minimum is six now, they changed it so you need to use all five consoles at the same time to activate the last grapple point to open the door. That's also why so many people say it's bugged, as it doesn't work as seen in the older vids you can find everywhere. Oh, and for the record: it doesn't seem bugged currently, it worked just fine for us last time we did it. TL;DR: 6