Aren't the servers now owned and operated by a third party. I thought that was the whole point of "cloud" servers.

I do agree it could make things more difficult, but in a good way. Right now, making a flashpoint "more difficult" pretty much means tons of hp for the boss which makes it a real slog for weaker DPS groups/solo (without really adding any challenge at all to high level BIS geared groups - they just power through the extra health without changing their tactics). Changing the AI could offset the slog with more tactics and responding to what the boss is doing rather than just a heads down button mash. Adding more variety to fights would make things more enjoyable for most players (there will always be a few that hate change and hate unpredictabilty - unfortunately, they are usually the loudest voices on the game forums).

Just played on Star Forge and everything was normal for me. Lag under 50 ms.

Agreed Planned shortcuts are one thing but terrain "exploits" are another. Hammer Station already has a planned shortcut if you have the right crew skill, doesn't it? I find it very difficult to believe the "jumping" shortcut was planned. With Hammer Station, the turrets always seemed like they were in the wrong place anyway, like the devs entered the wrong x,y position for them. Having them on each side of the bridge would have made more sense.

Since it is clear there are not enough resources to add any substantial new content to the game how about re-vamping the existing content to make it less predictable. You could start with something small such as a single flashpoint. Since both solo and group players play flashpoints to some degree, both types of play would benefit. A few "simple" ideas: 1) Add some randomness to the "trash" mobs both in size and identity. Have 2 or 3 possible types of npc/creature that are determined randomly when the flashpoint starts at each of the spawn points for the mobs (maybe different mixes of ranged/melee/healer types) 2) Give the "bosses" better AI so that they respond to what the players are doing. If there is a lot of healing going on, they redirect their attacks to the healers breaking the tank's hold on them regardless of how good the tanks are and it is up to the tanks/DPS to pull those attacks back off the healers (which for good tanks and DPS should be fairly easy to do quickly but requires the players to respond rather than just being heads down pushing keys). For high levels of healing, the boss could also throw out a healing debuff or damage booster. If there is a lot of ranged DPS, maybe they deploy a shield that reduces damage from ranged attacks, if its melee damage, they use a knockback effect. Basically have them respond to the way the players are attacking them. Maybe even give them minor adds that are designed to go after players using structures to hide behind (maybe something with a pull type attack). 3) Change the loot tables to reward loot that is relevant to the level of the participants. High level characters get tech frags/tokens, low level characters get appropriate gear when grouped together. 4) Add back the flashpoint specific gear sets from the older versions (Sentinel's Foundry Coat, Marauder's Maelstrom Pants, etc) to create an incentive for people to run the flashpoints at levels other than max level. "Back in the day", lots of people ran flashpoints specifically to get those pieces of gear. 5) Adjust health and damage done by the bosses based on the health and damage potential the players start the fight with. A bunch of high level BIS equipped characters would face higher damage output and boss heath than players running it at the "correct" level. This also potentially reduces the "slog" effect many of the later flashpoints have for smaller groups/solo Using a flashpoint for this experiment is better than using other content because if you break one flashpoint doing it, only that flashpoint is out of play. If you use operations, you risk taking one of very few of them out. If you do it with other missions you potentially could block character progression. Heroics would be a viable place to go as well but very few players do heroics in groups anymore even though it is much more profitable to do so. Any other ideas on how to change the existing content to make it more interesting for everyone?

That's exactly what it is. They don't want people to have lots of these "legacy" currencies as a way to "level the playing field" for newer players (which they value much more than long term subscribers because the long term subscribers don't spend money on the Cartel Market since they already have stuff just like what is on the cartel market - with almost all of it being reskins of older items). The tokens you get from the GS levels aren't worth spending your tokens on junk you already probably have (there's too few of them available in the GS level tracks). Tying them to other rewards that you can't claim is intentional - to "increase the incentive" to spend down the tokens to get the other item. The devs never make changes like this without thinking through the "consequences". All of it has a reason (sometimes with bad intentions, sometimes not). I expect that if this tactic doesn't draw out enough of the surplus tokens, they will just announce that the tokens are going to be retired (and a few month later introduce new tokens to replace them)

It's hard to say it's a dissapopintment after last season which from my persepctive was the low point in the series (no story, no companion, and a stronghold you unlock once per server so no real "replayability"). All in all, last season was just do Conquest and earn these extra "rewards", nothing new or different (in fact the first "mission" was run these old, long flashpoints because no one runs them otherwise). I do have to say that a one time use "bubbles" item is a bit cheap for a Seasons level reward. Nothing really worth making an effort for (since I'm not an achievement chaser anyway). This might be the first season where I don't even complete the 100 levels, no real incentive to go after any of the rewards there and Conquest burnout is a real issue (no need for the gear, mats, fragments, or credits at this point). I'm happy for the people who are "bounty hunters" that they have something to head canon but there are a lot of people getting basically nothing out of participating in the "event" which I think will show up in the "final numbers" for the season.

Logged into SV a few minutes ago without issue. Seems to be running fine now.

Same here. From the US Midwest, my connection to Shae Vizla is better than to any of the European servers.

In a 12 year old game we have too many of everything except playable content. If it's no more companions, it should be no more strongholds, no more mounts, no more pets, no more gear and weapon sets based on lackluster streaming series, etc. Take the time and money saved there to add playable content to the game.

While 7.0 didn't start the decline it was very likely the biggest disappointment of all the expansions. It was billed as the 10th Anniversary Celebration and fell flat. It was delayed from its original launch because the Playtest version was so full of bugs it was borderline unplayable. When it did launch, a lot of the problems were still there from the PTS. For a 10th anniversary, one would have expected more than an hour or two of story that was the same for every class, a broken required flashpoint, and lots of changes that really didn't improve the game (not to mention some of the crippling bugs that were pointed out in the PTS version and more or less ignored by the Devs). Let's be frank, UI changes is not a celebration of 10 years of SWTOR and that was a big part of what the development effort went into. Those kinds of changes are ones that should be spread across all the .X releases, not the "flagship" release. 7.0 wasn't the start of the downfall, but may end up being the nail in the coffin. It managed to upset just about the entire playerbase.

The character select screen would be a good place. It already has your subscriber status

The last two GS have been an example of what "story" is without companions. Totally lackluster and uninspiring. There is nothing to connect the player to the GS story (it's just another grind now just like Conquest - starting the GS "story" with "grind these three old and very long flashpoints" really made the whole thing uninteresting). Add a new companion, just don't make it required (even if it is only purchasable with GS tokens during the season) with a some add in interactions with the PC. Then the anti-companion crowd can skip it and those that like to have a variety of companions to choose from, can have them as well. Having companions increases the probability someone will play through the GS story multiple times rather than spending CCs to buy an unlock.

Battle of Rishi today, same problem

They have been extremely rare drops for a while now. I've only gotten them from mission mobs (planetary random mobs too) but very very rarely, never out of any lockboxes (at least for as long as I can remember).

Lower level of mission "Into the Fire" on Makeb also still has a floating turret

Since about 7.0 I have been running into situations where the companion disappears and becomes an invalid character even though they are still showing up as "present" and at full health in the HUD. This happens most frequently for me with Traitor among the Chiss and Taral V flashpoints (almost every time I run those). In order to get the companion back, you need to summon a different companion and then resummon the companion you had.

The only real issue I have is the same I have had with all the "expansions/updates" lately. Way to little story play time (and what there is, is just running down a corridor in a straight line with mob after mob of the same enemies to drag it out - reminds me of all the complaints about skytrooper corridors in KoTFE/KoTET). The number of people critiquing the story, having finished it less than a day after it launched, is by far the biggest problem with updates. An expansion/update should take more than 1 short sitting to complete. Everything from 7.0 to now is practically shorter than one mid sized KotFE/KoTET chapter and those were pretty much 1 sitting completions as well.

The Heroic +2's come in two grades. The ones associated with the bonus series were designed initially for higher level characters so they tend to hit harder and require better gear/abilities to complete solo. Bonus series content used to be something you had to come back to a planet to do (typically after you finished the next planet in the sequence) and the heroics associated with the bonus series were tuned to that higher level as well.

The biggest problem is lack of new content to challenge players (people keep pointing to FF XIV but that game has had tons more new content added at the top end compared to SWTOR). There has been so little content in the game over the last several years that it is impossible to make the base game challenging at all for the massively overpowered characters that you have at max level to keep the end game players happy. In reality, there probably should not have been any significant gear increases since KoTFE/KoTET, then there might be some challenge left in the later game (and new content wouldn't need to be ridiculously over-tuned to suit that power level). Quite simply, a lot of the content is "too easy" because players have abilities now that the the original content was never designed to handle. Walking around on the starter planets at level 80 with all your end game abilities available is most certainly going to trivialize the content. And lets be honest too, how many people are actually at a level appropriate for the planet they are on with all the leveling boosts (again something end game players wanted so they didn't have to deal with version 1.0 difficulty leveling their third or fourth character to end game level). Level Sync does nothing to make the content harder, it just makes it take longer. The only way to make the game more like "launch" would be to take away abilities that are not suitable for the planet the character is on and that would trigger massive "forum outrage". Just look at how bent out of shape people get when there is even a hint of them not getting max level gear from wiping out level 1 NPCs on the starter planets with their level 80 characters It's less a problem that the game has been "dumbed down" and more an issue that the power level for end game characters has exceeded the content available for them to feel challenged.

We started cutting up the story progression content into tiny pieces long ago. Why not start doing the same for GS, stretch it out as long as possible (two, three, or maybe more seasons). I guess we'll have to wait until the next GS starts to continue the story.

I don't agree totally with you on this. There is some aspect that is true but GS1 and GS2 had enough story and interaction with NPCs to make it something you might want to do on more than one character (not so much for the last season and the current one). Removing companions certainly downgraded any connection the character had to the "story" making the whole GS thing just another type of conquest mechanic (repeat old content until you are sick of it). The last two seasons have been totally lacking in a coherent story (the previous season story ended abruptly and this one even more so) and the current season is just a repeat old content with a couple of cutscenes. Nothing really tying the story to any of the participants.

This is the one least likely to occur. Throughout the entire game's life people have asked over and over for faster leveling. The original version of the game was an absolute slog where you had to complete every mission on a planet (and usually have to farm mobs for a while to) to be able to move on to the next planet. People have asked for faster leveling over and over for a variety of reasons. They want their characters to become powerful faster, they've already done the content a dozen times and don't want to slog through it again (but there is no new content to move on to), they want to get to endgame (or PVP or GSF) and don't want to have to level each character through all the content again, they want to get to max level so they can start collecting the "good" gear, etc. A nice idea, but would be met with lots of resistance from just about everyone in the game.

It's hard to be disappointed when you expect very little. Story content has been dragged out so far that you have to play a new character through the "old content" just to understand what you did the last time you played. Overall, the amount of content added has been embarrassingly sparse and even the GS add-on, that had at least been interesting when it was launched with seasons 1 & 2, has degraded to the point, there is almost no reason to participate in it. What needs to be done is for Broadsword to have each update focus on one of the gameplay modes and do a good job of providing engaging, relatively error free content (once per year everybody gets something substantial). They should define in advance, which aspect the incremental updates will address and then stick to it (so people know when their favored mode will be addressed). There is no real need to modify base game mechanics with a population as low as it has sunk.

I have noticed occasionally with some AOEs that have a "charging" period, that you take damage if you started inside the AOE and then moved out before it is executed (interrupt seems to work if the AOE is interruptible). It seems to be more a glitch than anything since it does not occur consistently in my experience. The "increased damage" AOEs added to some FP to make them more difficult seem to be more prone to this effect.