Not if its the main planet questline. Random sidequests you can abandon and pick up again, and many are, of course, replayable. However, the main questline of each planet cannot be repeated, and if you abandon it then it's gone for good.

Between you, you and the OP both get the "decent player" prize. Sadly there are a lot of idiots in this game. Some are hopeless abusive morons like the second DPS in the original post. Others are hyper-superior testosteridiots like some of the people replying here. Guaranteed, 90% of the people reading this thread were hopeless once upon a time. If they were lucky they met patient decent players who tried to guide them through their roles and help them become better players. That is what keeps communities alive, and the standards of play high. Sadly, many people meet aggressive morons who just insult, shout and kick and then sit there feeling all superior because they can play a computer game slightly better than some other random internet person. That makes people ragequit, is totally unproductive and generally makes an unpleasant community that nobody wants to be a part of. Having said that, of course, if a person is not only hopeless but any of the following: 1. Undergeared, 2. Rude or 3. a ninja looter you have the perfect right to votekick. In the first or third case I'd do a bit of explaining first in case they simply don't understand (rather than signing up in the hope of being able to get carried to the "need" screen). Then bubye. Everyone should be given the opportunity and information to improve. Not everyone is going to bother, but at least give them a push out of the door. After that it's down to them.

I'm not suggesting that you just take Guss Tanno and plug him in to the cutscene animation scripts and BANG! You've got playable Mon Cal's. I'm suggesting that it's perfectly possible to design a playable mon-calamari avatar which will be able to represent the facial expression commands in an appropriate way. If I didn't acknowledge in my post that it would take work then I certainly meant to. I am disputing the /amount/ of work it would take. Would you have to make the Trandoshan skin from the ground up in order to be able to represent the different animation commands appropriately? Yes. Does this mean you'd have to go through the entire game and re-design every single cutscene? I don't think so. You seem to. That's fine. I'm less sure. Maybe I just haven't made myself clear or you didn't understand what I mean. I know it's not possible to simply create a Trandoshan "skin" which will be able to represent human facial expressions perfectly with just a little cut issue tinkering. They or any other race which is based on a non-human face structure will have to be properly and carefully designed. I just don't believe you need to micro-manage every single cutscene. i'm also not sure that user content Sims mods are a good analogy. At this stage, certainly, Bioware will be happy if they can get away with such a light re-skinning to create a new race (like the Cathar). I simply don't think we should let them off the hook by saying that if you can't do it with a Sims style user-applied and designed mod then it simply can't be done. That's clearly not true. There's a middle ground between the extremes of just re-skinning existing character frameworks and totally re-animating every single cut scene in the game by hand. Respectfully, I fail to see how my guesses and assumptions are less valuable than your own. I'm sure you think you have a fairly good grasp of such things (altough with the slightly suspect exception of citing Sims mods you've provided no specific technical information indicating that you actually do). I'll take it on trust, but I still don't agree with you. I think the point you're skipping is that the prices of CM items in the GTN are a direct representation of demand graphed against (artificially created) scarcity created by the rarity of various items in the cartel packs. If you create a reason to reduce the demand of a whole class of items (not just a single example- a whole class) then cartel packs have a lower credit worth, are de-valued and thus less attractive to the people who buy them. The holostatue example you site is a good one- they allowed the demand of those items to /temprorarily/ drop by giving a perk to customers who had bought a more expensive product. If they hadn't got a big cash injection from sales of the expansion then the quantity of players with holo-statues would have been far less, and thus the existing examples would have dropped less significantly in value.

Agreed. That's a great idea.

Respectfully, I think you're missing the point a bit. The majority of female characters are played by males who prefer to play with a pretty rear view, preferably not wearing much. It's not that the devs misunderstand their market, it's that they fully understand who their market actually is, and they'll cater for the majority. Sad but true .

I think the reason why the OP cited the ability to speak basic as a reason to exclude Trandoshans and Rodians (and a bunch of other races) is because it is one of the reasons the developers cited for not including more "exotic" species. Honestly though, when someone comes up with far too many half baked and no legitimate reasons for something, you can be pretty sure they know their arguments are invalid and are trying to hide the real reason. Lip synching and facial expressions makes sense as an argument before you think about it a bit deeper. It sounds plausible, but honestly, it's not as though the Trandoshans, Rodians or let's say, Mon Calamari in cutscenes already are synched in any sort of realistic way, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. The humans aren't very well lip-synched by modern standards either. I can live with both situations perfectly well. So I don't see how that could possibly be a bar for playable species. "Voice over = lips/mouth/proboscis moves." Pretty much what we have now, and so good enough. Facial expressions are the same- there really isn't much sophistication there that we're going to loose by translating "human eyes widen" animation in to "trandoshan's eyes widen" as a general animation rather than having to go through every cutscene in the game to "bespoke" it. Still though, I think it may well be the case that Bioware will consider this (much more manageable) workload to be too much unless sales are predicted to be very high. If they think they can sell the same amount of, lets say, Cathar (with much less work) than say, Togruta, with work on the clipping issues then of course they'll release Cathar. However, as I see it all the front runner species have big issues. So far I think it runs like this: 1. Togruta 2. Nautolan 3. Kel Dor I think the real reason we won't see Mon Calamari, Trandoshans, Nautolans etc is simply because the value of helmets, gloves and bracers will drop if a whole bunch of PC species require them to stay hidden all the time.

This isn't directed at anyone in particular, and certainly isn't in response to complaints in this thread, but I do think that the massive amount of negativity, whining and ************ on these forums has an impact on developer/CS communication. Far too many people think that it's acceptable behaviour to just whine and moan about every little thing, accuse EA, Bioware and the developer team of all sorts of insane conspiracy theory nonsense, and get hysterical because their pet peeve isn't personally addressed by a company representative flown by private helicopter to their front door. I do think communication is poor, but I think that the community is partly to blame for that situation.

Can anyone else think of any more?

I know you're just paraphrasing what one of the developers said here, so I don't mean tot challenge you directly, but in my opinion this is a crock. If it were actually true then you'd only be able to play humans in all the Star Wars (and other) tabletop RPG's and computer games that have been made over the years. Of course you can relate to a non-human in-game. Perhaps it'd be better to stick to a bipedal 2 eyes one mouth format, but most Star Wars races are just anthropomorphised animals anyway, and so perefectly easy to connect with emotionally, as they're based on us anyway, or aspects of us, and designed to fit in to our sphere of context. It's pretty hard to relate to a Mirialan considering that next to zero material has been written about their culture, planet and species. However we still have them as a playable race (and I play one for better or worse).

Agreed - very irritating.

Thanks for providing some other examples of low level shells which don't have dye slots. I wonder what the thinking behind this was?

I think it's a pretty obvious thing to move to the next planet when you're over-levelled for the quests you're currently doing. Also, I think I am probably not the only person that gets excited at the idea of a new planet, and rushes to check it out as soon as possible. The quest log for SWTOR is really quite small (in terms of how many quests you can keep logged at the same time). This means your quest-log fills up pretty quickly, and the natural thing to do is abandon quests. I had NO IDEA that abandoning particular quests would shut that content off for me... forever. Yes, there's a warning. However, there's also a warning for the quests that you CAN pick up again. I read it the first time and (again I think, like most people) didn't bother to read it for the second time. Thus I didn't see the difference. On a sidenote, as it is so important, I do think that the planet quest abandonment warning should be in red text so it's not as easy to miss. Especially if you're going to prevent people from being able to pick up that content. My girlfriend actually unsubscribed over this issue- she didn't realise either, and really wanted to play Hoth. We were trying to pick up quests together so she abandoned a questline in order to pick it up again with me, and boom- Hoth was gone. After 8 messages to customer support and 8 automated replies she no longer wants to play the game. Sad for me, because we were really enjoying levelling together. From a commercial point of view I would have thought the more content you give and keep people having access to the more happy subscribers you'd have, and the longer their period of subscription will be. In the case of my girlfriend she would happily re-subscribe if this issue was resolved (or even if she simply got the Hoth questline back again). I'm sure she and I are not the only people who are vexed by this issue, and I'm sure she's not the only subscriber who's unsubbed because of it.

I believe the justification is that having a longer quest log would slow the game down. However, I find that hard to believe. Why is that case exclusively with swtor and not with other games? This problem is further compacted by the inability to retrieve planetary questlines. I think it's a pretty obvious thing to move to the next planet when you're over-levelled for the quests you're currently doing. Also, I think I am probably not the only person that gets excited at the idea of a new planet, and rushes to check it out as soon as possible. This means your quest-log fills up pretty quickly, and the natural thing to do is abandon quests. I had NO IDEA that abandoning particular quests would shut that content off for me... forever. Yes, there's a warning. However, there's also a warning for the quests that you CAN pick up again. I read it the first time and (again I think, like most people) didn't bother to read it for the second time. Thus I didn't see the difference. On a sidenote, as it is so important, I do think that the planet quest abandonment warning should be in red text so it's not as easy to miss. My girlfriend actually unsubscribed over this issue- she didn't realise either, and really wanted to play Hoth. We were trying to pick up quests together so she abandoned a questline in order to pick it up again with me, and boom- Hoth was gone. After 8 messages to customer support and 8 automated replies she no longer wants to play the game. Sad for me, because we were really enjoying levelling together.

It makes sense to control rarity of items in the game with "gamble" packs. However, I do not see why dye options should have rarity at all. I think it's a negative thing, and more likely to bring frustration and annoyance to the customer base than benefit the game in the long term.

Robes, trooper armour, long skirts, diplomat's outfits, Padded shouldered jackets... Honestly, there's a lot of armour which isn't "skin tight" out there. Sure, it's figure hugging, but the game has trouble rendering things which are too long and flowing, which is why the robes, skirts and capes look like they've been drowned in starch, and everything else is "figure hugging" whether it's male or female gear. Just about all medium armour trousers would make my mother seriously worry about her chances of grandchildren. It's not just the females who have figure hugging outfits, but I think you're exaggerating the lack of "padded" or "bulked out" armour. I do agree that "long and flowing" or "baggy" is troublesome, but I think that has more to do with the rendering engine than any idea of male chauvenism. It is no more true for female characters than for male ones. There are more "bikini" options for females, as there are a couple of "female only" outfits but no "male only" ones. Thank god for that...

Surely, you would sell more dye modules if you allowed orange items under lvl 15 to have dye slots. I was very happy to hear about the dye system when it was announced. Being a bit of a purist I've been wearing a plain boring old Drelliad Jacket since level 16 or so. However, I'd really like to customise it with a dye module. I'm sure I'm not the only person who likes the simple low level gear. I'd also be happy with a few new "simple" jackets and loungewear. I do understand that being in a different time period to the OT you want to stay away from smugglers all looking like Han Solo, but not everyone wants to look like a crazy space cowboy either.

I'd be happy just with an appearance customisation (including change of species choice) for my companion. You can already customise their appearance with gear.

I just think if it's not your specialist class primary stat you shouldn't even get a need option.

Yes. Yes! YES!!

Totally agree- I also think that planetary quests should be re-playable if abandoned or after the bonus quest series has been completed. Letting people replay old content will only help keep subscribers around long after they've run through all the standard content... and it would require very little time from the dev team to implement, meaning it would be real bang for your buck content to keep people happy and occupied.

This could be easily solved by having a stool appear under your arse when you sit- rather like the Xantha or holo-kloo appears when you use those emotes. If you position yourself near a chair or stool already, the animation will simply be eaten by the existing object. Therefore, no problem. In fact, I had presumed this was the OP's intention when suggesting this idea. Also, YES PLEASE! Signed.

I also agree with this. Jawagrams are cute extras, not a rare item that any player is going to be happy with. I'm sure it's not an intentional strategy from the developers to promote more sales by disappointing people when they spend real money on packs. I don't think it's intentional because it seems pretty obvious that disappointing customers with the product you provide will have the opposite effect: They won't buy any more of that product.

That, my dear fellow, is most certainly a matter of taste. If you like wearing a long jacket with a life vest in the collar, or you don't mind being yet another person wearing a waistcoat with a shirt and strap underneath, you're all set. There are very few viable "smuggler" looks to my mind. Lets not even get started on the elder game gear: Classic Gear: Wow.... really!? Basic Gear: An improvement, but just about anything would be an improvement on that. Elite: Same as the Basic really- not impressed. Ultimate/nightmare: Gimpy helmet but the jacket is kind of cool but requires dyes to hide the "coat of many colours" scheme. Still wouldn't wear it, and I sort of resent the idea of having to buy a dye mod just to make my "ultimate" gear which I worked hard to get look less like I've just starred in "Joseph and the Technicoloured Dreamcoat".

Attempting to look past the odd attitude of the OP, I do agree that for those of us that don't want to look like an anime space cowboy, it's a real shame the lower level smuggler orange shells aren't dyeable. As far as I'm concerned, the simple lower level stuff is really screaming for customization in a way which is less necessary at higher levels. On a sidenote, it's a strange move altogether- surely the more dyeable items the more dye packs they'd sell? I'd certainly be buying more if I could have 3 or 4 different Drelliad Jackets with 3 or 4 different colour schemes!

I don't like cream cheese. Therefore I don't eat strawberry cheesecake. I don't go telling people they should leave the cream cheese out of the recipe just because I don't like it. I order a strawberry tart instead.