Would not mind so much if cape physics were not so utterly borked as soon as you jump on a speeder.

I'd call perception bias on that one. My own experience does not lead me to think that chances are different depending on item level. Just this afternoon, I crafted 10 lvl. 55+ implants and got 6 blue procs. Definitely not complaining on that one

It looks like the fix applied in august (requiring self perpetuating power cells instead of synthetic energy matrix) has been reverted. Iwas changed and announced back then : http://dulfy.net/2014/08/11/swtor-dark-projects-no-longer-requires-synthetic-energy-matrix/ But now change has been reverted, and this component cannot even be obtained from jawa merchants. Could this please be fixed? Thanks,

Rolepaying (!) has nothing to do with these mechanics, can't imagine a Jedi trainer charging 600k+ credits to teach his skills to other members of the order. Not considering that, at this stage, a Jedi Knight character would have proven himself to be the best duelist of the order and your average trainer would have little to teach him. Real "RP" ways to train skills at this stage would be through quests, finding remote masters and such, but that has proven unpopular. I'm fine with training costs, but a full playthrough of the 55-60 content (without forced chest farming) with a char should give you enough to buy your skills when you ding 60. As it stands now, it is not the case. And yes, retraining skills players already had was an amazingly stupid move that can't be justified with RP either.

That was the one decent thing to do after a 40+ pages thread popping out. Thanks for making the right call. A bit saddened that this had to happen after many players (including me) had to pour a few millions down the drain, but I can also understand that figuring out refund amounts could be a real pain and I can live with that. Had cancelled my sub this morning after I saw the previous disastrous official statement regarding the issue, I may consider re-subbing if the bigger bugs get hammered before my time runs out ^^

I'm surprised no one caught on In NAME? Really? If a skill has been renamed for some reason (which is completely outside a player's control and does not affect his gaming experience in a meaningful way), then he has to bear the costs of re-purchase? How can that even be remotely justified? I actually feel sorry for Bioware community managers that have to post such PR crap on the forums knowing that it will raise a crapstorm but have been instructed to do so!

Around him, nope, but I'm sure he is not the only one in this situation, unless he is the only SWTOR player in his timezone!

Well, truth be told, it IS a dick move for EU customers and likely to cost almost a day of early access for those who want to enjoy the new content and get what they paid for (though I don't care for the whiny/demaning tone of the frustrated EU customer earlier in this thread). It is now very common for gaming companies to allow early downloads for their major patches so that they can turn them on at the right time. While it certainly not a god given right, it is one of the marks of a player focused company! Being an old-school player, I adhere to the "patch day no play" doctrine and kinda expected it, so I planned around and won't waste too much energy ranting and grumbling. Assuming patch rolls out fine, I'll launch download on my home computer while I'm at work and it should be ready by the time I get home.

Yeah, I enjoy this too but I know players who don't ... A mate of mine plays Diablo without any care for his appearance, which leads to mismatched/miscoloured clothes that would irrevocably remind me of good ol' Krusty

I came back to SWTOR about two months ago and it is definitely a good time to come back. I stopped before the game went f2p, which means you're probably where I was when I came back. Now for a pragmatic approach : If you had a lvl.50 toon before you stopped the first time, you can re-subscribe, get your *12 xp boost and level it to 55 in under 5 hours. Just go to Makeb, activate the GSI boost (there's a terminal next to every shuttle landing pad) ans focus on storyline quests. If you want to level a new toon, you can still run a XP-athon and do it in two days provided that you are not working Players have mentioned that gearing character level-up up that way can be tricky, and I would agree with them. however, if you have leftover credits from two years ago, Galactic Market stuff will be enough About Cartel coins : - Cosmetic and Convenience only. save your coins for a few select useful convenience boosts (cargohold/legacy storage space) and you can roll with your monthly allowance. You can also add a security key for another monthly boost About getting back into group content : Overall, I did not experience any issue when I came back, I was very open about the fact that I was a returning player and usually warned my mates that I was freshly back and probably a bit rusty, and did not have any bad experience. I found that it is better to ask for people to explain you Flashpoint boss strategies than wipe on them Most players do not mind spending a minute giving boss strats. Can't really tell you about raiding experience as I joined a well oiled guild straight away and they run a few ops to get me geared up and show me the ropes. You may consider going that route too depending on your character. Finding the "right" guild is often what makes an MMO experience enjoyable or not. As an old-school MMO player and a not so young professional, I need to find like minded guilds that want to play seriously but understand that real life commitments have priority over the game. Small word of warning if you come from Wow and play as a tank : while tanks in Wow can tweak a boss's nose once and keep aggro during all fight, a poor skill rotation in SWTOR as a tank may make you lose aggro, I found tanking more challenging and a lot more entertaining in SWTOR. In any case, I hope you come back and have a good time, game has changed in a good way since you left it.

Heh, there's always a catch, although the "sad mouth" associated with DS corruption does not suit me at all. If we want to sum things up with in-game facts (although I guess that the OP has figured things out by now) : - LS/DS does not affect equipment optimization options in a meaningful way (some lightsabers and relics have alignment requirements, but they are irrelevant in terms of equipment power) - LS/DS opens some cosmetic items at LS/DS merchants - LS/DS can significantly impact the storyline, including endings. There is at least one storyline that acknowledges "neutral alignment" (ie, you may receive a differnt title depending whether you are LS/DS or neutral). - DS causes a visual corruption on your character (can be turned off) - Reaching various levels of LS/DS alignment gives you achievements and titles. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few bits and pieces but as far as game mechanics go, I think it covers pretty much everything. Rest is mostly roleplay, character development stuff and there is no right way to decide your personality (some choices probably won't feel satisfying considering game limitations, but that's another matter)

The actual armor class bothers me less than the feel of it. Some heavy armors aren't that different from medium ones from a visual point of view, and Jedis are supposed to use their lightsaber defensively. Many scoundrels/agents armors look like longcoats/uniforms and don't really give a tanky feeling ...

Il existe aussi une option d'héritage pour pouvoir utiliser les speeders à partir du niveau 10. Ceci explique cela Cela dit, cette option coûte 40000 crédits et est particulièrement inutile en phase d'xp*12 ou les niveaux 10 à 15 se font en un rien de temps!

Truth be told, I'm not sure an operative wearing medium armor and specialized in stealth would feel much better as a tank.

I did not experience this as the chars I wanted to be LS/DS ended up as expected, though I will grant you that it was slower and definitely did not reach light/dark V by the end of a playthrough. I'd say that by going with this playstyle, my DS chars end up taking 2/3 of DS choices and 1/3 LS choice and my light chars went for 4/5 LS and 1/5 DS (this is due to the fact that there are far too many stupid evil choices to my taste) I'm all for choosing a path, but I say that there are more than just two! Full light and full dark are not paths to tread, but railroads to follow, and I don't find this an enjoyable experience. It's even more true for non force using classes that don't have any reason to care about LS/DS. That is because the moral system in swtor is highly questionable. In this specific example, letting a third party deal the killing blow without interfering is not a neutral choice, this is just being passive in front of someone killing a downed enemy. I would interpret this as Dark! True LS characters have to stand for what they believe. Now think about the same choice without being hindered by LS/DS indicators. Instead of choosing based on alignment hit, it becomes "can my character really stand aside while someone else delivers the killing blow or will he intervene?" Much more interesting in my opinion. Light and Dark is an important theme only if the choices you make are meaningful and hard. If it's just a matter of clicking the red of white icon, then everything is chewed and pre-digested and you only have to eat what the game regurgitates for you. That's exactly why this black and white view is flawed: Sith don't take prisoners? Really, then why are the inquisitors so skilled at interrogation? don't wanna include spoilers in this thread but there are so many instances in the empire storylines that contradict this statement! A Jedi cannot kill a Sith if the Sith surrenders? The act seems unlikely, but who says I want to play a perfect Jedi? Perfect characters are so boring. I played LS Jedi who fell to the dark side during the course of the playthrough and I found it very interesting from a character development perspective. Sure he ended up somewhere in the middle on the LS/DS scale (as he accumulated LS points early in the game before starting to score DS points) but my enjoyment at playing the story that way far outweighs this useless bar. And the JK storyline fortunately gives you plenty of opportunity for your toon to make these seemingly innocent dark decisions that lead you to the dark side. Simple things like starting to believe that the end justifies the means, that some bad guy was really too dengerous to be left alive and that killing him was for the greater good ... In the end, everyone plays the game the way he likes it and I'm certainly not begrudging you the right to do exactly that, but in find that moral choices are a bit flawed in SWTOR to begin with and that having these indicators make things even worse.

Heh, goes to show that you can learn something new, even after leveling 8+ chars ... thanks for the tip man.

Toon = character As for the, turn alignment indicators on or off, my view of it : Being Light V or Dark V does not bring anything significant in terms of gameplay, you merely get one achievement from each and a few fancy items from the LS/DS vendors (nothing essential though), so I could not care less about it. On the other hand, I found the red triangle and white star to have a negative impact on my storyline experience as I would sometimes favour the LS/DS points gain over the story (that is, until I realized that it did not matter) and removing them freed me from that. I would almost consider the option to remove affection gains/losses from the same screen if the option existed.

True enough, but like them or not, very few dare to mess with them! While the game does not provide many interactions with hutts, classes like Smuggler, Bounty Hunter and, to a lesser degree, the agent would probably less reluctant to deal with the slugs than the others. As a matter of fact, IA and BH do start their careers on Hutta

It's an interesting approach, but I'll offer one that I found very satisfying : being evil, but not stupid evil. Here is an example : My Juggernaut embraces the dark side, there is no doubt here. He believes that the strong shall rule the weak, that strength and power should be used to improve one's condition and that if you are not strong enough to get something, then you don't deserve to have it. That being said, he does not believe in senseless cruelty, as it achieves nothing. Why slaughter those that could serve you? He also has a warrior's honor that makes him avoid killing non combatants if possible. That being said, he remains a Sith and his emotions run strong. Revenge being an acceptable motivation, those who have harmed him in any way may enjoy a slow death ... In terms of gameplay, it gives you plenty of justifications to mix LS and DS choices and step away from the "puppy killer" Sith warrior. Advice has already been given, but if you want to immerse yourself in the storyline, disable LS/DS choices and take a while to think about your character's ethics and the way he sees the various factions (Rep/Imps, Sith/Jedi, outlaws of all kinds, Hutts ...)

I don't subscribe to the far to common view that Niman is an inferior form, but is not an uber form either. It includes elements from most forms, but this does not mean that mastery of all forms is required to learn Niman, that would defeat the form's purpose (Ataru, for instance, is supposed to be very taxing physically, while Niman is not). It is not as acrobatic as Ataru, not as offensive as Djem'so, not as defensive as Soresu, but it does not suffer from other form's weakness to the same degree. In many aspects, it reminds me of Jeet Kune Do

I knew of Niman as the favoured form of Force users that did not want to devote time to focus on blade mastery, but what I did not know is that it originated from martial arts based on dual blades. I was indeed incorrect on that score (yup, I did some research following that comment and learned something, which is always good I guess). In any case, I'll accept Exar Kun as a reasonable model for the class, but Maul defiinitely does not fit the bill. He did wield a double bladed saber and acted as an assassin; but that's as far as it goes. Maul was mostly a Juyo user and favoured powers more associated with the warrior class, though I don't doubt that he had knowledge of other powers and was possibly a proficient niman practicioner. However, he certainly lacked the thirst for secrets and arcane knowledge.

A big issue stems from the fact that shadows and assassins are definitely more fighter classes than Force wielding ones and it feels like they got shoehorned there because they needed to have a class with double bladed saber. I don't really see how Darth Maul can be considered the inspiration for this class as he had nothing remotely inquisitor-like and was a pure hatred driven fighter. Moreover, doubled bladed lightsabers are not really common because they are often considered impractical. A Jedi/Sith focusing on mastery of the force would have little use for such a weapon. It may have been better to give dual and double bladed lightsabers to the sentinel/marauder and find a more convincing seconday class for sage/inq.

Stupid Evil is a frequent source of argument among guildies. There are some Sith I could follow as an Evil char, as they have a vision. their vision may be evil or twisted, but they don't just kick the dog. Marr and Malgus come to mind, and potentially Jadus or even Baras if he wasn't so intent on destroying his own followers. Most other Sith are just here to be killed and move the plot forward/give xp. sadly enough, interesting depictions of evil are not that common in fiction, but I would agree that sith stupidity comes more from storytelling requirement than the Sith code itself. Evil needs to be stupid and dig its own grave or the good guys would have lost already. A very valid point. A Jedi would have to question himself to know WHY he enjoys combat. Does he want to know himself better through combat, push himself to his limits, explore the ways of the lightsaber (forms are way more than a set of moves) ... What is his view of combat in general? In which situation does the Jedi consider combat as necessary. Overly militant Jedi are not welcome but then, even hardened pacifists in the Order understand that peaceful solutions cannot always be reached. As Goodkind put it "It does the sheep no good to preach the goodness of a diet of grass, if the wolves are of a different mind."

I think that lore-wise, the class distinctions introduced in the TOR games did more harm than good. Not only on the lightsaber vs. force wielding distinction, but also on the general temper and the way to approach things. It seems logical to have warriors favouring a frontal approach and inquisitors being manipulative, but that is not mandatory. A cunning and manipulative warrior or a very direct sorcerer don't seem unbelievable, merely less likely. Back to the original point, there are some very valid arguments for both sides, especially from people who are not blindly championing one or the other, and it is quite interesting to read, but in the end, what we know of wrath/wraith is roughly 35 minutes of cinematics with a lot of gaps that the player has to fill by himself. While i would expect Jedi and Sith to train for years to develop their martial or Force skills, our characters develop so much faster due to game mechanics. One can only ride the "prodigal/unique/chosen one" argument for so long until it collapses. Noxx is renowned for going for slavery to Dark council in such a short time, but wrath goes from acolyte to ... well, Wrath in the same amount, which is just as impressive and hints at a comparable potential. It's like Sergei Lukyanenko (Night/Day/Twilight watch writer) who classifies mages in his books by "power level", 7 being the weakest, and down to 1 for stronger ones. Mages below 1 are "beyond classification". At this level, they simply have such an amount of power at their disposal that trying to classify them based on this alone is irrelevant. Force wielding characters in this game are like this (when they reach the end of their story class that is)

Sith and Jedi code have exactly the same flaw and express it in the same way. Total absence of emotion is absurd, as said above. Total reliance on your passion is just as stupid and Sith who behaved like this in game are viewed as ridiculous. There are many such Sith as they provide easily identifiable villains, but in the end, Stupid Evil does not appeal me. Rigid Jedi who apply the code to the letter are like comedy paladins you would see on any bad roleplaying table and equally ridiculous. I'm not gonna discuss the Sith code point by point, but only focus one the ambiguous first lines. Peace is a lie, there is only passion - Ok, age old debate of inner peace versus inner fire, SW style Through passion I gain Strength - This one is more interesting. Gaining strength through passion? Typical sith example, leave your hatred and your anger fuel your power. fine by my book, but there is a line between "fuel your anger" and "let it consume you" and threading that line is what differentiate the more powerful Sith from the comedy Villains In the same way we constantly see Sith (the smart ones, not the Stupid evil villains) actually thinking through their decisions, scheming and making rational choices instead of completely giving up to their darkest passions! Rigid application of both codes is equally ridiculous, simple case of "order versus chaos". total chaos seems horrific, but total order is just as scary when you think about it for a second.