oh damn. i completely forgot about the first encounter of our characters with Valk... since, well... he didn't die that much. indeed there is one option where we can indeed claim murder. whether a court would count it as such is another matter. i mean your character can say they acted with malice but even so the judge could still consider it brought about by reasonable provocation. other then that the final fight (which is juridically very problematic since it wasn't physical) and the confrontation with Valyin the main problem i see here is that in both cases the killing was simply lawful (self defense). so whether there was malice involved or not just doesn't matter i think. furthermore there is also the problem that at some point the actions of the eternal empire imply a state of war (except for chapter 1). as such the imperial family all become enemy combatants and therefore killing them is anyway fully legal for as long as they don't capitulate thus impossibly a murder.

someone on twitter claimed his dark side character murdered a certain family. that made me wonder. it is possible to claim murder in all 4 cases - from a legal perspective? In 2/4 cases i can't see how you can do worse then just self defense kills no matter what. in 1/4 i am not sure if there is even an option to be made directly responsible for the death. the last one i haven't seen yet so i can't judge. so not much material for murder - and lets take British laws here as e.g. german concept of murder is insanely hard to fulfill. so yeah, looks like just a bold claim that cannot be backed up by facts. then again its twitter but admittedly, it's kind of hard to achieve murder against people that are trying much harder to murder you instead. it must be kind of funny for dark siders... against such opponents one owns evilness is always overshadowed and put to shame in comparison. i mean its hard to look evil at all.

just wondering if Command Crate rewards would be 'significantly' improved if the visual gear (i.e. the orange 8 rating stuff without any mods installed) we get from them could be added to existing CM collection items with some system of unlocking them if not the same as for cartel market gear (BoE entire set to unlock).

yes, LOL is a very good example where free players have access to nearly 100% of the content (depending how you count the visual stuff) and the game makes huge amounts of money. DOTA2, WoT and alike show that LOL is no weird exception but rather that restricting access to multiplayer through paywalls is counterproductive to your income. muliplayer thrives the most on the many-player aspect of it - literally. thus access restrictions are the ones that hit it the hardest. with lower player numbers the same content becomes much less fun - due to prolonged waiting in queues, inability to find a group at all at certain times, finding replacements when group members leave, frustration about frequent failures because when players have less chance to retry content they are less experienced with it, high chance of unbalanced teams due to mixing of noobs and pros in PvP, ... it all works like a chain reaction: the decreased fun in multiplayer due to low player numbers causes further player loss which in return reinforces the aspects mentioned above.

EA/BWA is now trying hard to force people into subscriptions but i doubt that it is effective. instead they should just give it up and focus on the F2P people that like certain aspects of a game. see, those that play solo and stay for themselves don't really help the game or the subscribers and i doubt most of them will ever sub. so focusing on them doesn't yield much. but those that like group content enough to play it should be fully enabled to do so because of the effects this has for subscribers. the core business model of games like WoT, LoL, DOTA2, ... is build around multiplayer without restricting F2Ps from anything relevant for the gameplay - and instead merely increasing grind. the same should be done for STWTOR for all group content. as for story and single player content i think that this shouldn't be locked away by a paywall - as it is now for all except the original class plots. as i have mentioned before i would just require the players to grind for it in order to unlock every next chapter - whereas it is instantly available to subscribers when they finish the prior story. for what i have learned from other games is the F2P players are astonishingly tolerant to grind. in the end one has to accept that the majority of F2P won't ever pay so trying to force them to do so cannot work. it doesn't mean that those players cannot be useful for the game and the community. but as it is now these players are kept nearly completely separated from subscribers which is plain stupid.

the credit cap is a stupid thing to try to force people to subscribe but instead i think it causes just a lot of players that ended their subscription just to leave completely. in the case that a normal f2p system would be implemented with regular reduced credit income rates (also to prevent botting) the cap would need to go obviously.

there are a lot of F2P games and other freely accessible forums out there and they manage. but true one requires quite a little more forum moderation as spam will happen. however, filtering those game accounts that never even reached level 10 should massively reduce that. a karma system could also come very handy in this context. but then again, the value and weight of feedback is somewhat reduced once subscribers become a minority. i am at least sure that BW/EA management will much easier disregard it. so maybe still limit access to some areas of the forums.

since my characters aren't on one of the high population servers queues can take some time off the peak hours. usually a weird phenomenon in a F2P game, but then again SWTOR isn't really one. and that's just plain stupid. the current business models just makes not much sense - considering that alternatives could profit everyone involved! so first of all BW needs to change their view of what F2P players are: no, they are not freeloaders and thus not enemies of devs. instead they can be made into service provides for people that actually pay: remove waiting time in queues and enable multiplayer content become more viable for a wider audience. there are a lot of games that already had immense success with that business model like WoT, LoL and many others. basically it means that F2P players shouldn't have any restrictions whatsoever to access multiplayer content - instead merely suffer reduced loot/drop/xp/credit rates for all activities in comparison to subscribers. therefore they would require to grind and thus play more - which makes queue times faster. what they don't need immediate access to is story content. that includes original class story lines (except the first few planets) and later KOTFE/ET but excludes planet plot lines. now that we have level sync this is perfectly fine since there isn't a problem to do them at a later point. therefore these players would need to progress their character mostly through multiplayer content. if BW also changed that their raids and harder multiplayer content such that random groups would become more viable for it (with less failing at the final boss because specific roles are required and randoms are too often all DPS) the vast majority of subscribers could enjoy a bigger variety of the content there is. i rarely had the chance to even play OPs because of that bad design. another restriction for F2P however should be that they shouldn't be able to specifically pick out individual group content. instead they should either be able to queue for e.g. all FPs or none. that restriction has the reason that subscribers can pick what they like and still have short queue times because those players that queue for all would be grouped with them. a perfect example where F2P players become service providers. as for nice visuals, there are some rewards in the game that have a chance of dropping nice looking gear (supply crates from heroics, command crates, ...). but obviously good looks aren't essential for the service F2P are supposed to provide. therefore these should be an explicit subscriber benefit and probably be also integrated into the collections system to underline this aspect even more. next point is that F2P does also come with problems like spam and alike. initially F2P should be severely restricted assuming they might be bots at first. but through normal playing and gaining levels these restrictions should be loosened. another good idea might be a karma system. F2P players that get enough positive ratings from (different) subscribers should be promoted to a better status (to prevent exploits the rating might ignore cases where 20 people rate one person down or up in a short amount of time). considering that if other players value such a player (for providing help, being friendly and competent or whatever) then this indicates they are important to keep as they might be a reason why some subscribers stay subscribed! besides that it would motive F2P to be on their best behavior while it would make fighting bots/trolls/griefers slightly easier. finally, F2P players should be able to earn access to (some) story content through grinding and if they aren't misbehaving. being rated very positively might however speed that up a little. so some might ask what would the point be to stay subscribed if one is free to take part in all multiplayer content and get best gear? well, story is a big selling point in a BW game for one. and obviously having to grind many times as much as a subscriber is a big motivation, too. (after all look how much forum outrage there was about too much girding). besides some big F2P titles have proven that subscriptions work very well in exactly such a model. however to be fair there is also a downside: if considerably more players start play the game the servers might become more leggy and unstable requiring a hardware update on BWs side.

just wondering how realistic that would be to reuse the areas from chapters and make them into FPs / OPs by removing most story cutscenes to replacing them with background narrator like in uprisings. then the major work left to do is be to make new scripts for all combat - preferably in a similar way as in uprisings (since regular FP mobs are dead boring) or even better: with randomized scripts and mob spawning behavior like in Left4Dead to make replaying less repetitive. mobs and bosses visuals could be reused as well however they would need additional mechanics added - not necessarily new ones though. ... so basically combat focused multiplayer chapters ...

neither does it fit the pretend narrative of the doomsayers. sorry, but from all data i can find available with sufficient history plus additional sources the situation is inconclusive. there are no sharp changes either way. there is just enough to say that there seems to be a slight population increase over the holidays (which is normal for all games) yet not as decisive as it was last year (patch 4.0). at best one can say that 5.0 didn't attract many more players then naturally would come in this time of year. apart from general stats however there might be a swap of population occurring with veterans leaving while new/solo player coming in netting in an overall stable population. this would at least explain some of the seemingly opposing claims several people posted here as their observation. but in any case this is pure speculation either way as there is no hard data available.

from what i can gather twitch statistics show rather a minor upwards shift for SWTOR but can't find long enough history data to make it a definitive statement

this is exactly my line of thinking. take away the gearing aspect and there is just hardly any fun left. people always complain about lack of new content but what content could BW possibly make that is fun to repeat after first play through (if taken by its own value without any rewards)? all the FPs and OPS play all the same to me... sure there is a little bit of specific mechanics here and there but it isn't enough to make it really feel different enough from the rest. well, at very least the new uprisings actually added something that feels remotely new since some fights require indeed a different more active approach then anything form the old content. i have a faint hope that old FPs and OPs could be updated to feature in parts something similar. in the further future i also hope BW starts to introduce RNG into uprising event scrips with player interaction changing how each run progresses. that would make them refreshing to replay. and if that works rework old content in the same manner and then extend it even to the open world...

most action-RPGs would count for that criteria. Diablo series and Path of Exile being among those i can name instantly. if not for the 8 players i would list the LoL and its family but yeah... further away from the genre there are some shooter games though i admit that i don't know many with a 8+ coop mode because i haven't looked for such. anyway although just for 4 players i'd list Left4Dead regardless as it is just a great example of a PvE multiplayer experience. i think Team Fortress2 has a coop mode for more players. not sure about Warframe coop player limit. Armored Warfare has a PvE mode AFAIK. there were actually also MMORPG/Shooter attempts like GlobalAgenda, Defiance or Firefall but those failed for various reasons (well, mostly for trying to be too much WoW). however, there are a few other games in development to fill the gap. there's of a lot of these survival/craft/builder games appeared since minecraft and arma3 dayz mod. i can't name the titles but if its something you like you find plenty of interesting options there. hmm, i guess you'd have to be more specific about the gameplay/genre you are looking for to be more concrete. there are soo many games out there that it's likely you find something for you. but yeah, as for star wars games with 8+ PvE mode there isn't that many options to SWTOR, true

sure, but i wonder, of all the MMOs out there why in heavens name would you pick a MMORPG to play with others? in the last few years a great many new games and concepts have appeared with focus on all possible aspects of multiplayer and all so much better made then this outdated stuff. what kind of multiplayer gameplay are you looking for that other games just don't do better?

there is no lack of content. we have more then enough. however, that content lacks a lot of replay value and that needs to be addressed. and no, whatever changes to the gearing system won't fix it! level sync is a small beginning but at least is allows to play most of the old content. but a lot more needs to be done. and it isn't entirely BWs fault as the entire MMORPG genre isn't any better. and as for story chapers: well, at least this is something that makes it worth playing SWTOR at all. i wouldn't dared to consider subbing if not for that.

it's interesting how the vast majority of the things discussed here is gearing as if there was nothing else... oh wait there is nothing else. call me a white knight all you want but i find that for anyone not overly interesting in grinding for it's own sake the game has no entertainment value to offer at end-game level (well, okay there is PvP but even that isn't good in comparison to games like e.g. LoL - otherwise there would be more people playing it). my problem is that raiders are far from being the majority of the players i see in game yet their mindset dictates and enforces everyone else to follow their needs: grinding top gear. if that is supposed to be the very only "fun" aspect of end-game everyone must realize that this cannot be a sustainable concept - looking at how far other MMOs have evolved. FPs and OPs need to be fun for a wider audience out of their own first - meaning that even if there were no rewards at all most players should be able to enjoy them (doesn't mean i want to remove rewards ofc). but as it stands they are not because they play identically every single time! that's plain boring!! seriously, replaying old content is no where so dull and repetitive as in MMORPGs. nowadays there are so many great games that show how to keep old content fresh and interesting through various ideas. but all MMORPGs instead prefer to lead the bottom of the list instead.

of course you are right. but i have been on various game forums for too long. writing a wall of text (regardless of the content) only ensures that your thread gets buried with no responses. so you either have to hit on the devs (that's always most popular) or write it in a provocative way. that incites people to respond, bump the thread and get a heated discussion going and for as long as there is a steady heat left it will continue. of course it can easily be derailed if the heat grows out of control but if it doesn't (some) people start to make valid and interesting points. it's sad but negativity and outrage is just how forums work. as for empathizing with some fellow forum posters, that's somewhat difficult for me as MMORPGs were unplayable for me before therefore i have a very different mind set then veterans. however, as for the other players, well, that's another story. the thing i am observing is that that the vast majority of players seems to be complete solo players that at best occasionally queue for the group content but other then that stay for themselves. most of them don't seem to play for long hours nor go to the forums. these people are just so vastly different then those one encounters here on the forums. besides, i have a few OPs i really wanted to play at least once but whilst my server is still quite vivid it is so incredibly difficult to find anyone playing that content. yeah, in times where most games are MMOs in one sense or another new people who still get into MMORPGs don't necessarily do it because of the multiplayer aspects. actually i think that's even the worst selling point of SWTOR and it ain't much different for all other MMORPGs. seriously, it just isn't competitive with what other MMOs have to offer. ironically it seems that focusing on solo content and story instead is just enough to keep it afloat. though i doubt BW will abandon multiplayer altogether but rather will look for ways how to get these solo players invested in some new kind of multiplayer content. that said i think BW doesn't care (or cannot afford to care) much about raiders / MMORPG veterans anymore. it's a hard statement but it seems they tried going that road but failed to make it sufficiently profitable. now they are trying something else and it seems to work better even though it pushes their founding players out of the game. and that's a conflict for which there is no perfect solution.

what is the meaning of "white knight"? having the opinion that the core gameplay of this game (and actually all other MMORPGs i know) is fundamentally dull, repetitive and not fun doesn't normally get labeled as such. i haven't struggled with any other game so much as with this one (other MMORPGs i was unable to stand for more then a few minutes). if it wasn't for BW and their storytelling (which isn't at it's best here, yet still decent) i wouldn't dared to touch such a... meh but yeah, with their change of direction they got new players in like me that can't find fun in most of the aspects of MMORPGs. naturally i therefore don't think i'll find much in common with old veterans of the genre. and beware: BW is aiming to reach out to those other audiences. should they succeed there will be a lot of change to swallow for veterans i fear.

a devastating judgement about this game... and actually most MMORPGs. but true. however it turns out most players don't actively play in guilds. and this is why you forget to see that this concept just seems to make less and less money in the entire industry (if it nets positive at all). it's outdated and doesn't captivate younger players. BW turning away from it makes it obvious that they don't see a future in this direction. i think that with KOTFE/ET they even learned that doing single player story is way more profitable. sorry, but i think the gameplay you know seems to be dying out throughout all the games. it just seems it has a far too small audience.

what do you need the set bonus so desperately for that you need to gamble for it? you are so focused on getting purples that you are unable to realize that you don't really need them. the only players that may have a legitimate concern with it are the ranked PvPers. because this is the only case where even the slightest difference in nominal power (e.g. stats) between same skilled players can be the difference between win or loss and yeah, there it sucks having RNG meddling. but for everyone else it's just a luxury that isn't needed. if you complain and insist that you must grind it anyway then you have been conditioned into a addiction that you are simply unable to break free from. gearing has been made unimportant. THAT'S the major change. because of this the RNG for top gear hardly matters anymore as putting a lot of time investment into grinding gives you only a marginal advantage. how about you stop grinding for gear and start complaining about old content having too little replay value without rewards instead?

normally i'm not much annoyed by the typical forum whining (with their usual doom & gloop + "i quit" extortion attempts) that comes with every change in every game that has a forum. yeah, that's the nature of forums. but with 5.0 gearing change i see some old veterans clinging to a (computer-) stone age gameplay system that prevents the game from evolving. and that clinging to a past long gone is eventually bad for everyone. seriously, why do players focus so much on grinding gear as their main activity? don't they know that playing games can actually be fun out of itself? how can repeating/grinding through content that plays the same every single time just to get stats so one can play the next higher 'difficulty' which is mostly the very same gameplay with increased mob stats to undo the gear progression previously made be considered... fun? how much conditioning have MMORPGs inflicted onto these player that they cannot break free from it? that (skinner box) system may have worked for the very first online games where technical and financial limitations didn't allow for much more. but today? and what's all the fuzz about having no new OPS if all they they are is just upsacled FPs. i mean just scale down mob stats appropriately and you could play them with 4 players as FPs. the gameplay would stay nearly the same with the biggest change being a better FPS rate. the number of player just doesn't feel meaningful in any way. but worst of all their replay value is next to null once you figured out the mechanics (or googled it to begin with to save yourself being kicked by a vet). maybe it's because i am from a different generation of gamers that didn't play these first online games and i got too used to the pure entertainment value of the raw gameplay of modern games that i so despise the concept that i need a reward for everything i do in order to do it because the core MMORPG gameplay itself is just... not fun. but with all the uproar on the forums with every change made i fear the dev are being too distracted to be really able to focus on that most fundamental problem. without it fixed i don't see how new generations of gamers can be won over to play this genre if they have experienced how fun games (on their own without counting social elements) can be? without adapting to these new players the games of old cannot last. yet with the uprisings in 5.0 i saw that the rigid combat system can be tweaked to be somewhat interesting. still far from perfect but it's a start. now imagine the devs iterating on this with constant feedback. imagine combat encounters becoming more dynamic and less repetitive/predictable and therefore more immersive such that even fighting a lot of trash will be enjoyable (regardless of rewards). yeah, i find the current skipping of trash is the blatant depiction of how broken MMORPG gameplay is! and perhaps even imagine this game bringing back a very old element of tabletop RPGs: the "dungeon master". the person responsible for making every run onto a dungeon a unique experience (by partially controlling mobs/environment placements and their reactions to player actions) may sound hard to implement but there is already one game that did just that: Left4Dead. yes, to shame all the MMORPGs it was a shooter that managed to revive this core idea of RPGs and it had incredible success with it. imagine how OPs, FPs and perhaps even the open world could be fun if we had that. a system, where all your small actions would suddenly matter - not story wise, but through gameplay (e.g. killing that black sun boss for loot might have been a bad idea with all the goons that are now constantly sent after you.. . oh and skipping all the mobs in the last FP run was perhaps also not so wise with the final boss managing to call upon them for help. hmpf)

i wouldn't consider playing any MMORPG if it wasn't for BioWare. never was much into SW until playing KotOR actually. problem with MMORPGs and their gameplay/mechanics is that they are from the stone age of online gaming and therefore feel really outdated in comparison to modern games. due to the stupid success of WoW this genre was so much focused on cloning that it missed all the technical evolution. it's weird that the rigid mechanics that arose from technical limitations of a time long ago now more or less became the defining element of the genre, lol. hmm... actually it's sad.

"really commander?" so Zakuulans are now also "probing Uranus"? hmm, anyway the display of the Gravestone on Odessen is conditional on your story line as a the star fortresses therefore i though this is only visible to KOFFE chars.

hmm, it was indeed considerably changed. in the collections one can still see the original picture without the cloth. it is interesting to note that the main chest armor plate has been extended up to the shoulders and now there is a little piece of missing texture if you look from the back of the shoulder that isn't covered in the new cloth. wonder why it was done though. maybe the armor is used by some mobs and they changed it to make them better fit their role. or maybe they are reworking or outdated armors to higher detail (texture & geometry) and gave the artists quite a lot of freedom to do so. i remember that there were similar posts about other items on the forums after other patches. so yeah, they are slowly but systematically reviewing all armors for some reason.

really? i though she was bound on pickup. hmpf.