I was thinking - do BioWare employees and decision makers actually play the game? I mean regularly raid, pvp, level toons etc? Not for "testing" or because of working on a feature, but for fun, enjoyment and to be part of the game? I may be wrong, but I've yet to see any actual BW developers / producers in game chilling out with the player base. And I got a gut feeling that this might be the root cause for many bugs and questionable decisions and general direction. Is that BW employees and decision makers don't play the game.

you can try toonplanner.com - onine tool for tracking toons and operation lockouts.

Seems to be working now for me

For some reason I can't login to any of my imperial characters on the Red Eclipse. I just see the generic loading screen, without the progress bar, it waits for several minutes after which I get thrown to the server selection screen with a message saying: "Your characters on this server are currently unavailable due to maintenance. Please try at a later time." I understand if there is some issue and BW is working - but there is no info about this anywhere. Not in the launcher, forums, twitter nor reddit. If there is maintenance some info about it would be appreciated. I can login to republic side characters though!

With so many moounts... so hard to choose! And some get forgotten. How about a (cartel market?) tool that you put into your quickbar and when clicked will activate a random mount from your collection.

Just did a full run via Group Finder. All bosses. couple wipes. one person left and we replaced quickly. Server: The Red Eclipe Time: roughly 13:30 - 14:45 ( GMT + 1, UK time) No ultimate commendations! Just did a run (The Red Eclipse) and nada. zip. nothing. 0 ultimate comms for the run

It is 8 man. Even though it says 16. Also: No ultimate commendations! Just did a run (The Red Eclipse) and nada. zip. nothing. 0, zero, nil ultimate comms for the run Thanks. bugs bugs so many bugs

No ultimate commendations! Just did a run (The Red Eclipse) and nada. zip. nothing. 0 ultimate comms for the run Thanks. bugs bugs so many bugs

what I would like to see is not an automatic Group Finder, but rather a group organizer tool. Let me explain: As a player I can start a new operation using in-game utility. I would be able to select operation, difficulty and size; and post it. Much like a thread on a forum. Other players can then check for these forming operations and request to join. And from that point it would be a manual operation. Op leader can accept/reject your request and use chat to deal with specifics. To make this utility more useful it could do couple extra things: * check lockouts for that particular operation and either reject your request or warn the op leader when you request to join. * optionally impose minimum gear level (not user defined, Official minimum levels set by BioWare) * handle roles (join as a specific role: tank, healer or dps) and in ops group get marked as such I would be able to always access this UI from any planet / instance. It would be extra nice to be able to signh up for notification when a specific ops configuration is started. Say I am interested in S&V 8 Man Nim mode - I can sign up for that and when such a group is started I get a notification. In a nutshell I think this would be far more flexible way to organize raids.

I would like to see group finder changed as I described in this thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=7480021#post7480021

I am in a guild. And that wasn't the point of this post.

I think it would be better if full operation run was required before you get the weekly reward. So tired of people suddenly "have to go" and "busy" the moment they get their weekly. So difficult if not impossible to find replacement or place in a group later on. Am I the only one annoyed by this?

first time I hear this. I got level 55 Light V sorcerer and no one ever mocked me for it :S But then again I'm on european server if that makes any difference ...

The PvP is kinda forced outside as well: a) enemy pvp flag is on then they are yellow enemies and you can accidentally hit them and get flagged immediately. b) group up for heroic and get flagged because someone on your team has a pvp flag there are some people who take advantage of this and drag others into pvp who don't want that! This is the most annoying part for me.

Couple more ideas to make cruising slightly better: - do not dismount the speeder when activating a shield. Shield helps against getting knocked off so easily - allow using force speed while on a speeder. Would be nice to dash through annoying places

What I would also like to see in the future is in-game scripting / plugin API. I am aware that such tools could seriously unbalance the game, but I don't think such issues are insurmountable. For instance development would be inside a strict sandbox, all pligins reviewed and digitally signed by BioWare, user reviews, comments and abuse report options. This way many interesting features and additional content could be created for the game by the community.

Excellent post and many great ides. I apologize if any of mine are already mentioned: Chat One of my bigger gripes with the game is the chat. I have few ideas and suggestions on how to improve it: - permanent background option - sometimes chat text is difficult to read. If I could toggle the background it would help a lot. - every tab to have a separate channel: Perhaps I am missing something, but it is very frustrating having to change the channel manually (group, general, guild, ...). All too often I send message to the wrong party. - quick keys to quickly navigate between chat tabs - highlight the tab that has new unread messages - option to chat with opposite faction (imperial to republic and vice versa). With a quick option to ignore incoming messages from a player. - filter options for separating out system messages about xp, credit etc gains. They clutter the UI, but I do want to keep more important messages. Repetitive fights One of the most annoying things for me as I cruise around are constant repetitive fights. I have seen (and used myself) countless times when players take absurd routes just to avoid nearby npcs. At times it is interesting and fun to just go around and fight everything in sight, but as I progress in levels these fights are becoming a major annoyance and contribute too little to my XP score. Especially if I go back to a previous planet like Dromund Kaas for instance. My suggestion is that every character would have a rating that would grow over time like legacy and experience. This rating would determine if nearby npc would willingly attack the player or prefer not to - basically become like yellow npc. If I attack them then obviously they would return fire and draw nearby characters into the fight, otherwise (unless relevant to the current mission / task) they would prefer not to deal with me. For jedi this could be called "Aura of Calmness", for sith "Field of Fear" and so on. Secondly based on the same idea - npcs in the area that I have defeated already would automatically ignore me as long as I am in the immediate vicinity. This would avoid having to fight the same group all over again. Travel Traveling around is way too cumbersome. - For an advanced society they sure seem to lack maps! How about a possibility to buy world maps from vendors? These maps could open the general areas and travel points except story, heroic and secret areas. - travel by taxi to any location on the map for a (large?) fee with few restrictions: outside of story areas, active battle areas, inaccessible locations, heroic locations and such. - increase speeder speeds to more realistic speeds: this is super advanced space faring civilization and their speeders do barely 20miles an hour? I think there could be more speeder levels each opening at every 10 levels with speed increase by 25%. So starting at level 10: 100%, 125%, 150%, 175%, 200% - option to return from flashpoint to the previous location like with warzone queues. Misc - sometimes on higher level planets it is difficult to find a group to do a heroic mission. Especially if this mission cannot be shared. I was wondering - how about possibility to hire a strike team for a (huge?) fee that would be capable of doing the heroic mission with me? Or simply help me fight though a tough spots. Could cost something like a million credits for 10 minutes or something. They would not attack other players and other faction players. Only npc that are part of the mission you hire them for.