The Iokath Op is officially called “Valley of the Machine Gods” though it was referred to as “Gods of the Machine” for a while; the corresponding abbreviations VotMG and GotM (more frequently used) are in use as well. The colloquial “Gods” reference is the most frequent by far. Even though it is the second-most recent Op, it is considered the most challenging, especially the second and final bosses; a player needs to be very experienced in completing the preceding operations in 8-person groups before attempting Gods. It is a good thing there’s no real story hidden in that operation. You won’t miss anything if you ignore it. Operations are challenging and satisfying group content. If you’d like to try them, I’d recommend joining a guild. Many large guilds hold training operation runs every week. If you mention the server you’re on, either I or someone else can recommend a guild for you to consider. Do note that you’d need to be able to at least listen in on instructions from the Ops Leader using Discord.

This was addressed recently.

Devolution into personal attacks in the comment is an indication that we've reached "Peak White Knight"; but I'll ignore that and respond on the merits of some statements there. My previous comment and this are solely about the state of the Loadouts and Combat Styles on PTS; please keep that in mind. The Loadouts and Combat Styles - which Trixxie was talking about and I opined about - are not that massive a change (I'm not implying that Trixxie agrees with that assessment); even if they were, it is still quite reasonable to expect the development team behind a AAA MMORPG to be up to the task of doing a decent design. Far more mission-critical complex systems are routinely updated with much greater design sophistication and success than what we see with SWTOR here(*). Yes. That is what Software Project Management is all about. It is at least a 50 year old discipline with important lessons being learned as early as during the OS/360 development (mid-60s). They're not inventing the project management practice here. It is possible to do all of the above in Waterfall, RUP, and Agile Scrum development methodologies. We have previously experienced Configuration Management(1) and Change Control(2) failures as well. What we have here is just a failure of a software development organization in competently discharging its most fundamental responsibilities. Ignoratio elenchi Not the only blunder but certainly a major one; we can agree on that. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ (*) Another recent example of failure of design team is the Amplifier Window; the original "enhancement" was followed up with a bad fix which required a real fix subsequently. While the left hand was doing this, the right hand was actually coding Amplifiers out of existence. (1) Defect fixes rolled out in a patch not making it into a subsequent release so the defect reappears after having been fixed. (2) Code that is no way ready for production making it onto production servers. We had this situation recently where everyone who logged in during a time window had the game client continuously re-downloading the entire game in a never-ending loop. There was at least one other previous instance of code making it onto production servers prematurely.

Kylath’s ‘Guard’ed as a matter of course now, I expect? :-)

Reading this at this stage - we're at the original go-live date - is both frustrating and infuriating. Looks like a failure to consider all aspects during the design of the feature. Or it was designed and coded by somebody who doesn't play the game recreationally. The original Guild Wars had this down right 15 years ago.

3 Languages.

(In addition to above suggestions) What worked for me (playing solo): Stayed out of circles, Raid Buff, DCDs, OCDs, Medpac, self-heals, healing and defense shield from the temporary bar the game just gives you.

Seasons is supposed to be a limited time event that comes back after a break. GS 1 is done. GS 2 will start at some point. It can likely start at anytime, but they decided to tie it to 7.0. So, it is now scheduled for Feb 15, as mentioned above.

You can check the duration of your subscription on the SWTOR website. What does it say? Do you have 4 months' worth subscription time remaining?

I do like the 6.x gearing where every player has a decent opportunity of getting the best gear. i don't like the "Fast Forward to the Past" idea of hiding the best gear in the Operations.

This is like saying "Nobody I know voted for Nixon." The above quoted statement reflects the limited circle of subscribers you know; it does not reflect a true cross-section of subscribers. My characters are in multiple guilds each of which runs multiple scheduled (*) and ad hoc Ops throughout the week and most scheduled, recurring Ops have excess sign-ups with multiple standby players each week. These Ops run the gamut from training Story Mode Ops to quick fun runs (20-25 minutes for Veteran Mode Dread Fortress, for example) to "can folks help me get MM Apex lockout for my other team." The last two types come together in Discord and are often cross-guild. Then there are the actual progression raiding teams; I don't have enough time in the week to be part of enough of them. How popular and varied are the Ops runs and motivations? Example: This past weekend, on the Satele Shan server, the guild leader of "You Can't Take the Sky from Me" organized a server-wide Operations Race to benefit the World Wildlife Fund (WWF.) Multiple teams - complete with judges/monitors, streaming video and so on - raced through 3 operations in 2 hours with the winning teams receiving several billions in credits from the guild funds; participants voluntarily contributed money to the WWF. The goal was $200. This is the second server-wide Ops Race she organized this year. Ops are popular. They vary in difficulty and attract a wide variety of players for varying reasons. (*) Recurring Ops that are on a published event calendar You might be able to do SM Ops with the GF as it exists today; even there I'm not sure of Ravagers and ToS. You certainly don't want to have VM or MM Ops in the GF as it exists today. For that to happen, GF needs to enforce Set Bonus, near BiS gear (with amplifiers, augments, right stat distribution, right trinity split) and have a means to check some uploaded parses to allow grouping. Otherwise it'd just be a massive source of frustration initially, and a massive failure in a week or two.

Leaving aside the matter of refunds, I want to address the usefulness of Amplifiers. The Crafting Critical Amplifiers have been of dubious usefulness, to put it mildly. The Crafting Efficiency Amplifiers have been worthwhile. The Combat Amplifiers provided the most bang-for-the-buck; 9+% more DPS, 20+% more Armor Penetration, and so on have made the difference between clearing or wiping for countless operation runs. Amplifiers are too expensive and the whole process disadvantages new and less prosperous players. As someone who afforded perfect Amplifiers on multiple characters, I’m still glad this scheme is going away; I expect / hope the impact of Combat Amplifiers will be folded into the base gear.

It will take time after 7.0 releases to acquire the BiS gear, experiment with the skill and utilities and get Openers and Rotation/Priorities right and then to practice them. If this is a progression raiding team, they'd be re-clearing the legacy operations first in VM to get back the hang of things before attempting Gods; probably even clear Dxun first before attempting Gods as the last Op. So, it is either clear now for the achievements (especially the Mastery ones) or wait a few months after the release of 7.0 to revisit Gods. At least that is the situation with some progression raiding teams I'm aware of.

I do hope so as well. To be on the safe side, I'm going to spend part of this extra time switching up the alignment on some of my force-user characters: - change their alignment choice (bottom-right, next to minimap) - raise the influence level of some companions (max 8) on the character (Commander's Compendium, for example) - run crew skill missions on 8 companions till the character goes "from Light V to Dark I" or "from Dark V to Light I" as I desire It's a good thing I already have Light V and Dark V at Legacy level though I'm not sure if it matters when it comes to changing the primary combat style. Tech-user characters are, of course, out of luck.

I do hope so as well. To be on the safe side, I'm going to spend part of this extra time switching up the alignment on some of my force-user characters: - change their alignment choice (bottom-right, next to minimap) - raise the influence level of some companions (max 8) on the character (Commander's Compendium, for example) - run crew skill missions on 8 companions till the character goes "from Light V to Dark I" or "from Dark V to Light I" as I desire It's a good thing I already have Light V and Dark V at Legacy level though I'm not sure if it matters when it comes to changing the primary combat style. Tech-user characters are, of course, SOL.

Thanks for that summarization. Concise and useful. I copied it out for reference.

I suspect something like DvL but much more lengthy and tedious retread of existing content. Plus 25,000 Wookie hugs achievement.

Spag is an insult with no real meaning.

Looks very similar but not identical to "Inquisitor's Vestments" and "Arakyd Industries Handgear" (gloves). The primary and secondary colors are switched as well.

This is about the first combat style only: - Force user characters need to have unlocked Dark/Light V achievement on their legacy even if through other characters - additionally, the Force user characters should have Dark/Light alignment opposite to their faction (Imp character should have Light I or above etc) - the Force user characters can only switch to their mirror (opposite faction) advanced class only; not to any other advanced class - non-force user characters cannot change their first combat style; it will be forced to what their current advanced class is They're removing the Dark and Light point acquisition and the DvL on-screen toggle so you cannot change your alignment from what it is now (except if you farm the Dark or Light points before 12/14/21 on your existing characters) Can you feel the excitement tonight?

Absolutely. The entire Combat Styles thing is a "Bait and Switch" for existing characters the way things stand. Giving 3 slots to existing characters is the right and proper way to make this good.

ArenaNet and NCSoft were way ahead of their time with Guild Wars which was released in 2005 and they maintained that with Guild Wars 2 to some extent. The original Guild Wars has features that SWTOR hasn't managed even in 2021. Example: You can use 3 companions to do that game's version of Flashpoint-like activities and you can use 7 companions to do the raid-like activities. You can recruit pre-geared, pre-skilled companions provided by the game or custom gear companions and carefully set their skill bars; in either case, the companions exhibit amazing intelligence in combat in using their skills. You can change the companions you recruit for any and every activity individually.

None of the above is true. Not in the least. I'm a lurker on that Discord server and posted earlier - just today on this very thread - with examples of information there that is not in the forums. Worse, Chris engages with dataminers and datamined information on Discord even though it is verboten on these "official" forums. Why? Are you a BW employee, employee's family member, or an Influencer? Why is it frustrating to you? I can understand disagreement on your part as a regular player, but frustration?!

SWTOR Theorycrafters The additional information available there - for example, the changes to combat logging and combat replay - gobsmacked me. Samples: Loadouts: There is this headscratcher: Combat logging and replay. (Click the [PLAY] button at bottom-left of the page.)

I couldn't have said it any better. Certainly not in such civilized language. I'm that disappointed. Just the Combat Styles thing with its Force vs Tech, its specially-constructed and unnecessary requirements, first-vs-second combat style differences, exceptions and so on takes 2 pages to describe and leaves people confused and with more questions. The leaders of most of the guilds my characters are in are looking at substantial loss of members, including some progression raiders; so, they're reduced to cheer-leading the changes to keep the morale up.