When we switch from Vitiate to Valkorian, the name changes, the appearance changes, the personality changes. At some point, you change so much the characters may as well cease to be the same person, no matter how much logic you believe there to be between the transition. Even assuming that 100% of complaints would be removed in the post explaining the reasoning between the character's evolution between the two, I can't help but wonder whether the story would have changed much, if at all, were Valkorian to not be Vitiate but a separate character altogether. Who instead of continuing on some master plan, simply noticed the destruction of Ziost from his seat on the Eternal Throne and finally decided to see what this backwater part of the Universe was up to. How much more interesting it would've seemed to me if we were tempted not by the same being who wanted to destroy all life in the universe moments before, and who we constantly expected betrayal from, but someone who was a legitimate ruler of a peaceful nation, who felt that the best way to deal with the mess of a democracy in the Republic and the harsh Autocracy and backstabbing environment of the Empire was to simply conquer them with military might so that they might know the same measure of peace and stability of Zakuul. Better to me is of course not better to someone else. And looking at KotFE and KOTET as standalone story I enjoyed when I played it. As a continuation of the story I'd invested myself when I started playing a few days before the Makeb expansion, it did feel disjointed, and to my taste needlessly so.

Eric has replied on the forums and said while they read the suggestion box, they don't comment on things inside because it might seem like they are lending official weight to the idea being implemented, which I believe is fair enough. *edit* http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=9076386&postcount=10 found a post

There are questions that remain after the announcement. Information on the general area of the bugs, in terms of what content is being affected, would be nice. What I think is more important is to get out in front of possible complications that might remain. Will the patch be delayed again if it isn't fixed? Is there a world in which the bugged aspect of the patch gets removed and the rest of it ships next week no matter what?

Keep in mind, that what we know about Jedi and what people think in this particular point in the timeline aren't necessarily the same. Look at it from this point of view. The Jedi were blamed by a large portion of the populace for the Treaty of Coruscant. They left to Tython because the government on Coruscant put fixing the temple on hold, and they kind of stayed cloistered on Tython for a few years licking their wounds. The game takes place 10 or 11 years after this, which is 10 or 11 years with no major battles, no real stories of Jedi on the battlefield. Also, the number of Jedi compared to the number of soldiers is relatively low, and even then, there's a healthy skepticism on the tall tale nature of Jedi powers that seems to be a consistent thread throughout star wars stories.

I wonder how people would feel if we knew exactly how small the current % drop rate is for those items. I would imagine its far closer to the rancor in the nightlife event rare than even the tier 3% you suggest.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/17/final-fantasy-online-director-defends-monthly-subscriptions-in-the-golden-age-of-free-to-play-exclusive/ It's an interview from Naoki Yoshida from ffxiv, which I quote a bit about what I think this is a good perspective on content creation in a sub vs f2p model game, even though its 3 years old. Though I really hesitated on posting this because of the source of the opinion in the interview. In terms of content creation I think they tried to do this here with the monthly story chapters, and now trying with the Operations bosses. Its my belief that the story chapters monthly failed to retain enough people to continue along with the chapters this year, or else we'd have seen more of them rather than a pivot towards group content. I'm not sure the Operations cadence will do better than the story chapter cadence, though I do think it shows signs of some learning that its not just ops bosses but they've added a quest line and a daily area as well.

You're better off saying the game is no longer a theme park MMO, as a number of people will come in and obfuscate what you are trying to get at in this post by talking about the many varying definitions of an MMO. It certainly feels like the game would rather be a single player experience along the lines of a Halo campaign instead of a theme park style MMO as it would have been construed in the past.

The answer we got during live stream regarding rng gearing was "excitement" and "thrill of the hunt", so it's probably safer for them to not try and explain their reasoning, as its most likely equally underwhelming.

You don't have to hate the game, BioWare wish they had a couple hundred thousand more people who felt the same way, and we'd be merrily waiting for the next batch of single chapter updates for the next six months. But the perspective feels a lot like someone moving to Canada in August and wondering why everyone complains about the cold weather.

I don't know why we expect the development team and community team to be any better at talking with each other than they are with the player base. Whether its competence or nefariousness behind the omissions, is beyond my knowing. I don't think this inquest into why the patch notes will lead to an improvement in leaving things out any more than the last time it was done. Nor will I be holding my breath for an explanation on where in the chain things went wrong and how they plan to avoid it happening in the future, and will simply chalk it up as another vague promise that may not even be capable of being kept.

If this stream goes the way they usually do: focused on returning companions in a meaningful way, no timetable 8 man group content being worked on, more information in March or April subscriber perks/rewards bioware storytelling If there's not details and a date for an operation on the next stream, even one months down the line, using that word was a gigantic mistake.

The fundamental problem is that the devs seem to think that gearing through 3 tiers of gear should last the entire year between numbered content updates, rather than simply allowing the gearing period to be shorter but introducing more tiers of gear between numbered updates. At least this is the only way the gearing system and changes make sense. Of course, the problem with this is that normally new tiers of gear arrive with new content, and it would make no sense for them to recalibrate the old group content several times a year to accomodate new item levels, simply only doing so when they bump up character levels.

Two tips, one on each lightsaber.

It should matter exactly 0 to you whether the dev team cares about the community or not. A lack of content, a system you disagree with. Care about those things if you want. But whether the dev team cares has no bearing on the work they do or don't do. If they changed their mind tomorrow and removed the Galactic Command system and announced 2 new operations coming in March, would you care whether they did it to keep customers and to make money instead of loving the community?

In all of the talk about how to fix or adjust or change the gearing system, I think this is ultimately the question that needs to be discussed first, because all of the changes kind of revolve around this question. When making suggestions on how the gearing could be implemented better, we are implicitly making a judgment about how long this should be taking. I do not believe that an entire year on the same gear tier is reasonable, and any attempt to stretch out gearing over that period of time is what leads to decisions like the pure rng behind the Galactic Command system. I believe it is not unreasonable to expect a new gear tier to be introduced three or four times per cycle, with the early adapters being fully geared in 6-8 weeks, with another month for catch up mechanics for those who gear slower, before introducing another tier to be worked on. Of course, 6-8 weeks sounds entirely unreasonable when you are dealing with people who may be gearing a dozen characters or more, which brings me to a second point. There are two ways to gate gearing. Place a high number of game hours required, or halt the gearing process, stopping it using artificial lockouts based on gear received. By basing gearing around lockouts, you encourage people to swap to other characters as soon as they hit the cap. The cap should be low enough that a person hits it by casually playing the game over a few days a week. Those who have more time simply move to other characters and hit the cap on that, and continue doing so based on time available. Obviously all of this is merely personal opinion, but the reason I decided to post this is I was curious as to what people here think is a reasonable time period for one character to become fully geared, either in terms of hours played or how long in a calendar sense it should take to become fully geared.