Why restrict gear transfers? The only thing that can't be farmed by a dedicated player anyway in 2-3 weeks is gold augments which besides exploits are the #1 contributor to inflation on the other servers anyway. I'm all for long suffering APAC raiders/PVPers being allowed to send over their well earned gear. You may not like people using Shae Vizla as a "fresh start server", but it is the primary thing keeping it from turning into a dead server like Leviathan which is only used by people farming Galactic Seasons anymore. It's imperative to keep the economy from being inflated to maintain the unique appeal.

If they don't restrict or bind items with transfers, moneymaking players are going to consistently and periodically clean out the GTN on Shae Vizla and go make billions on the other servers with just a few items. If they allow a player to take even a million credits per character with them, the GTN will be cleaned out within an hour of transfers opening and players will be tempted to just transfer characters whenever they need money which isnt good for anyone.. Credit limit needs to be zero and CQ credit tokens need their values converted to one credit. Crystals, mounts, armor, toys and weapons can all be unlocked by your friends, guildies and family on your existing server for use on Shae Vizla via collections. Decorations transferred with your legacy and can be donated to your new guild for credits. Binding transferred items to Legacy IMHO is the best path forward as it allows players to still use anything they bring over within their new legacy on Shae Vizla. You have a new and unique opportunity to create and maintain an economy where even preferred players can afford some nice CM items, which will both help attract the healthy player base necessary to keep Shae Vizla viable and feed your cash shop like your original FTP model intended . You just need to tweak some of the credit sinks, which while a bit annoying on other servers, create a real barrier to entry on a non exploit inflated economy. I recommend a 60-90 day window of reduced transfer costs to/from Shae Vizla (90cc?) once you are able to code and test the new restrictions, followed by a short 50% collection unlock sale.

Also, i've noticed something maybe not intended with the GTN update. I really really strongly disapprove of being forced to buy the lowest price. But it used to be, you had to undercut by a certain amount and not 1 credit to avoid that guy who is going to buy the even number or above a small undercut on principle to reward a "good" seller and punish an undercutter ( I am that guy). Now you don't have to worry about that. 1 credit undercut? no problem. Buyer has no choice. As people figure this out it's really going to work against your intention of lowering prices because of your decision to take a market force (choice) completely out of play.

Thanks for the update, appreciate the candor and the transparency. I started playing shortly after ROTHC came out. I remember what that economy was like, I bought pretty much every account unlock via the GTN . I also remember how hard it was to make money, how much I had to gather and craft and babysit my auctions., how guildies running dailies together to earn credits was an actual thing. I vehemently encourage you to eliminate the ability to transfer credits to/from Shae Vizla. I would also suggest that any transfer binds any bind-on equip and bind-to legacy on equip items in inventory and cargo hold. That should stop people from flooding the market with items, both cartel and crafted, not generated on Shae Vizla, with the possible exception of crafting materials and jawa scrap which would also have to be addressed. However, there are a few things that need to be fixed in regards to cost that are creating barriers to entry in both crafting and running PVE content. Vendor costs on Shae Vizla still reflect the economies of the other servers where you can offset those costs by selling stuff you gather through regular gameplay like crafting and augment mats to other players at rates that are 10-100X what Shae Vizla can generate. I don't want to spend an absurd amount of time grinding dailies just to be able to afford to level characters, crafting, or my gear. It's really hard to do anything crafting without at least 3 level 50 companions. For example, 250k x 3 crafting skills to unlock past level 600 is prohibitive. Companion gift prices are set for when Influence (once approval) only went to 10k and not 250k. 5 million in gift costs is fine on the other servers, it's a week of doing nothing but dailies on Shae Vizla. The older (1.2) legacy unlocks are costly but ok. Class XP 1-5, Exploration XP, the influence ones. But the unlocks added later are cost prohititive. 1.2 million for the gift speed boosts. 1.8 million for speeder piloting 5. These are things I used to put on every toon I started. Forget about even thinking about mobile cargo/legacy holds. These things are per-character and not things I can fix by transferring my legacy. Then there are the PVE barriers. 1 million for a single tactical. 2.7 million just for a set of blue hyde and zeek mods. Repair costs which are fine on other servers you might have to quit or disband your group on Shae Vizla. I realize you can't make things different on the client side in regards to the servers, but you should be able to tweak some things server side to help us out. So my suggestion is to reduce the vendor prices by 90% on a few select things that see regular use. Tacticals Companion Gifts (they bind to legacy now anyway so no need to worry about server shenanigans) Crafting Vendor unlock costs Hyde and Zeek Also a vendor who sells bind to character unlocks at a reduced cost for the legacy perks that were added 3.0 and later would be greatly appreciated. All the cartel market items I see on the GTN are selling for 1-5% of their price on the other servers, but all I really see is stuff people have opened via their galactic seasons boxes. I think people are hesitant and nervous about what the server transfers will do to the economy. But grinding a little to pick up some of the spendier cartel items has been great.. As for legacies tranferring, my unlocks (especially rocket boost) are an absolute must. Datacrons would be extremely appreciated, as would 330/334/340 implants achievements. My general achievements, I don't care so much. Would actually help to farm all those small 20cc achievements again. So to summarize: 1. Make transfers available at reduced cost 2. Elminate ability to transfer credits 3. Bind or bind to legacy (if possible) any items you transfer with you 4. Reduce Shae Vizla vendor costs 90% server side on companion gifts, crafting schematics, repairs, and tacticals 5. Find a way to reduce cost on per-character legacy unlocks added post 2014 6. Don't touch my rocket boost 7. Profit

One suggestion, get rid of snaring slash and give a passive that gives twin saber throw the leg slash effect for all 3 specs. Let another ability replace slash for watchman.

Honest question for the devs, what is your target number for abilities? Do you want everything to fit on 3 quickbars? If you gave us some guidelines we would love to help you out with what our priorities are.

Wow this is sad. You took all the feedback from the guardian pass and doubled down on what everyone hated about it with sentinel, which is sad because some of these new passives would be very nice IF we didnt have to choose them over losing abilities. To recap, on all 3 specs: Transendence must be specced into and costs centering. You must choose at 70 which 2 defense/mobility abilities you have been using forever to lose. Force clarity, which was just given last expansion and our set bonus is built around, must be specced into at the expense of perhaps the best new passives. Keith, you allegedly are a longtime hardcore player. Why are you allowing this to happen to our beloved characters? As devs, can you not foresee all the confusion and infighting this is going to cause among players about being properly specced for the content you are attempting? In 6.0 you may not have picked the right utility, in 7.0 you may not even HAVE the ability you need. Good luck to new players in PVP , they are going to die so fast+ its going to be worse for them than when expertise was still a thing. The defensive response after the guardian changes and now this make it pretty clear you are not budging one inch on gutting the classes. This is going to be a bigger fiasco than galactic command. If you don't like the comments now from the tiny dedicated slice of the playerbase even aware these changes are coming, wait until they hit live and all the salty teenagers find out how bad their toons got neutered. We're trying to do you a service, we want this game to succeed as much as you do. This is so bad I don't even want the expansion or level cap increase.

In 7.0, we want to reduce the quantity of defensive skills overall, across all classes, making for a more balanced and enjoyable experience in both PvE and PvP content, while at the same time making the defensives that remain more impactful and fun. What does this look like in both modes? In PvP, our intent is balanced, more dynamic player encounters that move away from rotating defensive cooldowns and move more towards utilizing a broader set of skills in each class’s kit. In PvE, our intent is to take into account these changes, and adjust NPC encounters as needed to compensate. Thank you for providing us with your intentions. I think this is pretty much along the lines of what we had all assumed. I'd like to provide some counterpoints: 1. Rotating defensive cooldowns is an absolutely core mechanic to this game, in the same way other mmo's have blocking systems or other "defensive" mechanics to balance their gameplay. Learning to use your defensive cooldowns is something that a new player learns to get better, and feel that sense of accomplishment that hooks you on a game. If you neuter this down to the point you have on the PTS, you are trivializing half of the combat experience of this game. A good player playing his class well should not die easy. Replacing 3 DCD's with one overpowered one is not in anyone best interest. 2. It is not the number of abilities, but the steady power creep among them (aloong with overpowered healers) that has led tot he TTK and balancing issues. Some of this is due to spoils of war changes, some of it is buffing classes that were too easy to kill to obnoxious levels (merc). 3. The light touch on the combat system and the steady enjoyment of combat throughout the years has been the rock that has held the game together through tough times where you were taking the game in directions players did not want to follow. For me personally, I've always enjoyed the combat across classes regardless of the content (or lack thereof) you were putting in front of me, and it has been the primary thing that has kept me from trying out other similar games, and I'm sure I am not alone in that. What you are trying to with this system by making us choose which abilities to give up among abilities we already have and having the nerve to call it "choice" is the biggest risk you have taken since you went the FTP route. Please don't do it. A bigger, more successful game already tried this with disastrous results (which this game has steadily reaped the benefits of). Please don't follow that path. 4. I would accept a nerf to our defensives, but an outright removal is going to push me further toward the off ramp for this game. If I have to play vigilance without focused defense and two of enure/saber reflect/blade blitz, what is the point of even queing for pvp or putting my companion on dps so I can heal after every pack of trash mobs. 5. If you think Time to Kill is a problem in PVP, wait until how happy everyone is constantly getting killed within 15 seconds. The primary problems with TTK are :a) overpowered healer + tank combos (which can be helped by nerfing the damage transfer from guard). A robust time to kill actually lowers the barrier to entry into regular warzones for newer players. 6. After a lot of thought about defensives, one conclusion I have come to is that DPS and Tank defensive cooldowns should feel different. I would halve the power of some dps dcds but give tanks their full power, with the caveat that you finally find a way to make rolling a skank tank undesirable in pvp, which should be as simple as using the bolster system to make sure their mastery and power are capped to the level of a tank outfitted in full tank gear, which would make running power mods or stacking mastery on a tank class useless in pvp. Example proposed stock 7.0 defense guardian: Focused Defense: 12 charges Saber reflect: 5 seconds Saber Ward: 12 seconds Blade Blitz: +100 defense for duration Example proposed stock 7.0 vigilance guardian: Focused defense: 6 charges Saber Reflect: 3 seconds Saber Ward: 6 seconds Blade Blitz: +50 def for duration (no more blitzing though acid pools Ability path choice for vigilance: +6 charges to focused defense or +2 seconds to saber reflect or +6 seconds to saber ward. You can take enure from my vigilance guardian. Enure +Medpack was nice to have, but if something has to go I volunteer enure as tribute. In this way you reduce the defensive power creep, keep player from revolting, and don't have to rebalance all PVE content because you are not changing tanks. Everyone wins. In the past when presenting controversial changes, you have put over-the-top changes on the PTS perhaps with the hope players would eventually accept the dialed back version, and I hope that's the case here because this needs a ton of work. I'm also highly concerned about your plans for interrupts and stun breakers, potentially taking them off of action bars. The timing of them is very important, and I strongly, strongly strongly discourage taking them off of keybinds. If you need to standardize them across classes with one ability, I will miss the animations like force kick, but its not a dealbreaker as long as I have an ability on my hotbar. Please, please, please dont put them on those pop-up action bars.

I'm not gonna lie, reading these changes is heartbreaking. As a player with 10,000+ hours invested in this game, It feels like you're asking me to choose which one of my kids I want to keep. But I will do my very best to be constructive. The addition of Loadouts is maybe the single best QOL improvement ever made to the game and I am so excited for it and all of the hours of gearswapping it will save me. Please also make it clear to us that Utilities will be going away to be replaced by this new system and what you mean by "AP". Is that a new catchall term for class resource pools? Vigilance/Vengeance has been my favorite spec to play in any video game for many years now because of how smooth the rotation is and how well rounded the mix of single target/aoe/survivability is. It's not going to be the same after these changes. It will be a shell of its former self. Please look back through the history of combat changes you have made in the game and why, and realize it took a lot of hard work to get to the very good place you are currently in when it comes to both class balance and rotations, and don't underestimate the intelligence of your player base and the ability of new players who want to learn to learn. This is an example of something you did right. You give us the option of a single target damage buff, an AOE damage buff, or a crit buff. These are examples of things you did wrong. Making us choose between abilites is bad, but it also is going to seriously break endgame content for both PVPers and PVErs. Also, utility choices that affect resource pools and cooldowns for dps are a bad idea in general because they break rotations or change the way they need to be played. I get that you want to streamline things and reduce ability bloat, which allows you to add more abilities in the future. Guardian is one of the least ability bloated classes, when compared to sentinel/gunslinger/commando. I think making us choose between abilities is the wrong way to go. Its true dps and healers have too much survivability in pvp and way too many stuns and slows. If you want to prune one defensive ability, I get it, to make us choose one of 3 is too much. I think there are better ways to accomplish this. 1. Make certain abilities discipline-specific. Example: only focus gets slash, only defense gets retaliation. Vig gets vig thrust, focus gets force sweep, defense gets a buffed cyclone slash. There is already a lot of this baked in like hew/dispatch and vigilant thrust/force sweep that should not be changed. 2. Roll "utility abilities" into other abilities as passives. Chilling scream can become a passive of force sweep/cyc slash/vig thrust. Force Leap can be used on an ally from 0-30 Meters to replace guardian leap. 3. There are utility abilities across each class which you can't remove without badly breaking content.. These abilities are all also generally standardized across all classes and the ability to keybind them all to the same key across classes is a great benefit: 1. Interrupt 2. Stun Breaker 3. Threat Drop 4. Resource Generator 5. Hard Stun 6. Soft Stun/soft AOE stun 7. Movement boost There are also abilities that are iconic to the advanced class, like saber throw and saber reflect that should remain. I think a binary approach is preferable to giving us 3 choices because it sets things up better for you to standardize across classes. I would use this meta for a "binary choice approach": 1. Single target passive OR AOE passive (both for dps/tank and heal). 2. movement passive OR damage mitigation passive 3. (PVP-specific) Attack passive (root/slow etc) OR survivability passive (root/slow/stun immunity) This is important for pvp balance, if you want to be that jerk globalling people with roots stuns and slows you should be a bit of a glass cannon too. 4. Offensive cooldown reduction OR defensive cooldown reduction You can standardize these across classes as you make your other builds. Please, I cannot stress this enough, do not make us choose between abilities in our path, Imagine the confusion new tanks/heals/dps will have being asked to change their spec for every single fight of a fp/ops because of a change in mechanics. You will be making things much more complicated, not less. I can live without enure and even saber ward but please dont touch my rotation, or iconic abilities like saber throw (very important to stop caps in pvp and pull mobs in PVE), saber reflect and focused defense. Get rid of slash for Defense and make riposte have no CD by default. give 10% dam increase on riposte for the flawless riposte 4 pc set bonus instead.

I'm not gonna lie, reading these changes is heartbreaking. As a player with 10,000+ hours invested in this game, It feels like you're asking me to choose which one of my kids I want to keep. But I will do my very best to be constructive. The addition of Loadouts is maybe the single best QOL improvement ever made to the game and I am so excited for it and all of the hours of gearswapping it will save me. Please also make it clear to us that Utilities will be going away to be replaced by this new system and what you mean by "AP". Is that a new catchall term for class resource pools? Vigilance/Vengeance has been my favorite spec to play in any video game for many years now because of how smooth the rotation is and how well rounded the mix of single target/aoe/survivability is. It's not going to be the same after these changes. It will be a shell of its former self. Please look back through the history of combat changes you have made in the game and why, and realize it took a lot of hard work to get to the very good place you are currently in when it comes to both class balance and rotations, and don't underestimate the intelligence of your player base and the ability of new players who want to learn to learn. This is an example of something you did right. You give us the option of a single target damage buff, an AOE damage buff, or a crit buff. These are examples of things you did wrong. Making us choose between abilites is bad, but it also is going to seriously break endgame content for both PVPers and PVErs. Also, utility choices that affect resource pools and cooldowns for dps are a bad idea in general because they break rotations or change the way they need to be played. I get that you want to streamline things and reduce ability bloat, which allows you to add more abilities in the future. Guardian is one of the least ability bloated classes, when compared to sentinel/gunslinger/commando. I think making us choose between abilities is the wrong way to go. Its true dps and healers have too much survivability in pvp and way too many stuns and slows. If you want to prune one defensive ability, I get it, to make us choose one of 3 is too much. I think there are better ways to accomplish this. 1. Make certain abilities discipline-specific. Example: only focus gets slash, only defense gets retaliation. Vig gets vig thrust, focus gets force sweep, defense gets a buffed cyclone slash. There is already a lot of this baked in like hew/dispatch and vigilant thrust/force sweep that should not be changed. 2. Roll "utility abilities" into other abilities as passives. Chilling scream can become a passive of force sweep/cyc slash/vig thrust. Force Leap can be used on an ally from 0-30 Meters to replace guardian leap. 3. There are utility abilities across each class which you can't remove without badly breaking content.. These abilities are all also generally standardized across all classes and the ability to keybind them all to the same key across classes is a great benefit: 1. Interrupt 2. Stun Breaker 3. Threat Drop 4. Resource Generator 5. Hard Stun 6. Soft Stun/soft AOE stun 7. Movement boost There are also abilities that are iconic to the advanced class, like saber throw and saber reflect that should remain. I think a binary approach is preferable to giving us 3 choices because it sets things up better for you to standardize across classes. I would use this meta for a "binary choice approach": 1. Single target passive OR AOE passive (both for dps/tank and heal). 2. movement passive OR damage mitigation passive 3. (PVP-specific) Attack passive (root/slow etc) OR survivability passive (root/slow/stun immunity) This is important for pvp balance, if you want to be that jerk globalling people with roots stuns and slows you should be a bit of a glass cannon too. 4. Offensive cooldown reduction OR defensive cooldown reduction You can standardize these across classes as you make your other builds. Please, I cannot stress this enough, do not make us choose between abilities in our path, Imagine the confusion new tanks/heals/dps will have being asked to change their spec for every single fight of a fp/ops because of a change in mechanics. You will be making things much more complicated, not less. I can live without enure and even saber ward but please dont touch my rotation, or iconic abilities like saber throw (very important to stop caps in pvp and pull mobs in PVE), saber reflect and focused defense.

I would make a change where you earn the conqueror title not by finishing #1 on the leaderboard, but by the guild hitting a targeted # of CQ points. It would have to be significant, like 50 million or more in the current meta. Could be different targets for different size yields. It would still make you earn your title, but the leaderboard would be just for bragging rights. I had a few characters in the guild that dominates star forge, for 3-4 years. One by one they were kicked as the requirements to stay in good standing got stricter and stricter, until the last one was kicked after about 10 days of not logging in. A big problem with the guild balance is the non-stop kicking and recruiting that goes on. A lot of this is because many many people want one or two toons parked in the megaguild so they can get their titles. If you can get your titles in a guild with your friends by all coming together, it will kill the megaguilds ability to non-stop recruit. People will actually play with people they want to play with, not beg to join some monolith.

I just wanted to say that after many years of trying I think they finally got things right with the conquest point and objective balance and I really enjoy the quality of life improvement and find myself dedicating a great deal more time to conquest now. So thank you devs, and I am uneasy about any large scale further changes. I think getting rid of the repeatable craft any item objective is a good idea for so many reasons. Replace it with a daily objective of craft 100 items or something. You could even add a new objective to learn a new schematic. There are plenty of other ways to make crafting a viable way to earn conquest without making it so easily exploitable. Have a targeted crafting based conquest that runs every couple months like they used to with infinitely repeatable war supply and prefab objectives where crafters can flex their muscle. If there is one thing I am disappointed in, its the lack of rewarding ops-based objectives. Some of the most fun I had in conquest was in the old last boss lockout farm days. I can't stomach joining a rampage group. My proposal would be to add an infinitely repeatable "kill any op boss" objective that runs every week. Could even make different obective for each difficulty: 5000/sm 7500/vm, 10,000mm (pre multipliers). I guess people just wouldnt like the CQ objective pop-up during a boss kill.

I haven't seen this explained in depth, but as far as I am aware this is basically how it works: It level syncs you down (lvl 50 for EV/KP for example). But you gain stacks based on your item rating when you enter into a level scaled area. Your Mastery, Power, and Endurance are increased according to how many stacks you have. For example, on PTS version 1, when I geared up with 308 gear, I had 19 stacks. On PTS 2.0, with 276 gear I had 3 stacks. So your gear does matter. As far as I can tell, this is the case with planetary and solo content too. I had stacks while doing a solo FP and heroics on Alderaan. However, level scaling as currently implemented still makes relics, stims, and adrenals utilizing mastery, power, or endurance useless. Suggestion: Instead of giving a defined stat benefit, give a percentage of stat benefit which ignores the stat squash. Example: Serend Assault Relic: damaging an enemy procs a 15% boost in power for 6 seconds. This will allow us to use relics in all content and get a consistent benefit. Right now as a DPS the only option I really have is devastating vengeance and the crappy alacrity clicky. Can be used on the following: Seren Assault Relic. Focused Retribution Relic Boundless Ages Relic Versatile Stim Adrenals Also, It is going to be beneficial for dps/healers to gear with defense mods in level synced content. The potential of running 20%+ defense without any dps loss will be a balancing and gearing issue. Suggestion: Swap Shield and Defense on tank gear as secondary and tertiary stats. Shield on Mods and Shield and either defense of Absrob on Enhancements. Since dps and healers don't carry shield generators, running shield mods in level synced content will give them no benefit. It also will help tanks because they will have a more balanced stat pool.

I spent the weekend testing out the new gearing on the PTS. I'd like to make some suggestions to help improve the system. It's clear a lot of time and effort was put into the Spoils of War system, but it definitely needs some balancing and tweaking to turn it into something that, to me as a player , is something that is more enjoyable than frustrating. 1. Too many tiers of gear. 19 jumps of only 2 level is way too many. Many players will simply give up. My suggestion : 3 tiers of entry level gear and 3 tiers of endgame gear. 270 green 276 blue 282 purple. 290 blue1, 300 purple2, 310 gold 2. Too much unmoddable gear. With set bonuses being the other half of the grind, it is imperative that all gear contain mods that can be swapped into set bonus gear. Unmoddable gear should be limited to trash mob drops and synthweaving and armormech gear crafting. 3. Item rating of loot drops and difficulty of content are completely disconnected. Solution: Insert a maximum and minimum item rating range into the drop algorithm for each kind of content, regardless of your current item rating. For example: story FP can drop tier 1-3 (270-282), vet fp 2-4(276-290), MM FP 3-5 (282-300) SM OP can drop tier 3-4, VM OP 4-5, MM OP 5-6. 4. Crafting system has too much mat inflation and unnecessesarily puts endgame mats in simple schematics. Also, requiring 9 green components plus 3 blue compontents to craft one purple component is overkill. The new tier system is interesting, particularly getting different tiers of mats from running moderate or rich missions, but the system on the PTS vastly overcomplicates things, and its going to be near impossible to make augment kits as currently situated. Suggestion: Realign the basic vendor trained schematics with the pre 6.0 meta. Example:cybertech 270 green mod: 2 green cybertech components (which cost 2 of each green mat + one white mat+ 2 green UT mats) 276 blue mod: 2 blue cybertech componenets (2 blue+2 white+2 blue UT mats) 282 purple mod: 2 purple cybertech components (2 purple+2 white+2 purple UT mats) Suggestion: Please use the corresponding crew skill mats for crafted mods instead of using slicing components for everything. This was one of my pet peeves with the 5.0 crafting system. Make use of the slicing mats in the augment system only, where they have more than enough use. Use the refined iso stabilizer in the endgame gear schematics and leave it out of the lower tiers. If people want to craft their way to a level suited for entry level ops, they should be able to do that. Save the grind for the set bonuses and the higher tiers of gear. Suggestion: Add a new dark project recipe which removes the refined isotope stabilizer and inserts the new conquest mat, which should balance the 2 mats and allows guilds to better craft their way towards opening up their ships, or solo players to max their companions. 5. Tech fragment vendors should not contain additional RNG. All set bonuses should be available at all times. If this isnt acceptable and you still need variety/time gating, make one particular piece of all sets consistently available on a certain day of the week. Example: All headpieces are available on monday, all chest tuesday, etc. Set bonuses and tacticals are interesting because, since they are not tied to item rating, you can keep adding them down the road to give people new things to work towards. I would even suggest adding sets specific to certain operations or events to refresh older content. Offering a carrot to players not tied to item rating Is a strength of this update and has the potential to bring sustainability to the game and balance to the competing interests of the dev and player. But if people: 1. Cannot plan their way towards a goal 2. Feel the grind is too long They will give up. 6. Amplifier RNG and credit cost It appears this is intended as a credit sink. I think it would be smarter to accept the new normal in the economy. Players have adjusted. Casual players arent going to touch this. I wouldn't mind paying 100k per mod for the right to choose my own amplifier. I would also either not vary the stat amounts of each amplifier, or tie it to item rating instead of making it random. 7. The Core Issues of conquest have not been addressed and goals are too high. The Guild Leveling and passive conquest points were great additions. The update on the PTS puts a real damper on them. But the problem was always that conquest goals were not repeatable., or not repeatable enough. I think the events (Gree, Rakghoul, Bounty) could have new life breathed into them if their conquest goals for the dailies, world bosses, and Ops were made infinitely repeatable like the Dantooine ones are. Xeno, Eyeless, Pylon Guardians are some of my favorite content, and they've been ghosttowns all summer during their events. 8. Items are dropping which are not for your discipline, and with funky stats (defense and accuracy on the same piece for example). Hopefully this is just a work in progress bug, because your algorithms/loot tables need work.

Do you ever feel like you are in a psychological experiment disguised as a video game? It's an open secret that EA pushes lootboxes hard in every game it controls. I know this isnt what the team would give us, given their own choice. However, I am a bit saddened and disappointed that this was all the pushback you were able to get us. The "RNG Protection" in particular is the worst. 1. Tech fragment breakdown rate is horrible. 2. One vendor: Pure RNG by slot and limited by your current item rating. 3. 2nd vendor: random assortment of items and available 4 days a week. This doesn't fulfill any of the "play how you want" graph. Crafting - mat requirements inflated When you announced this I thought, hey it'll be okay, crates are gonna be fallin like raindrops and I can slog my way through the RNG. Nope. Looks like renown crates will be significantly harder to come by than command crates are currently. Ops drops getting nerfed too with only last boss dropping anything useful. The only thing I like so far is that it looks like I might be able to deconstruct green and blue trash drops into jawa scrap.

I would appreciate an answer to this question, as a player who uses it a lot. Are you going to find a way for us to keep it/use it? Or is your intention to remove it due to it potentially being overpowered due to XP now affecting gear acquisition (renown and conquest)? If so can you find a way to still make it useful for leveling (say work only from level 1-74).

I really hope the mat requirements for schematics are artificially high because you are trying to keep people from getting a jump start on 6.0 and you are not seriously considering the amounts others have alluded to earlier just to craft simple green things. Because the mat inflation here is worse than the credit inflation of the past 3-4 years. Please keep in mind when balancing these things the lessons of the last cycle, where the simple blue mat from FP's, WZ's and OPS (refined isotope stabilizers) was incredibly overvalued because it was used in too many things (particularly dark projects and 236/240 augments) and dropped in too small of amounts. While the purple mat (Dark Matter Catalysts) became near worthless. If you start putting the new blue endgame mat into simple non-top tier schematics, you are going to end up with an upside down market again. And you might want to consider dropping that from deconstruction/renown boxes and tone down the jawa scrap items.

Is this a universal change to aggro range, or or you just seeing the results of being a lower level (because they dropped the level sync on a few planets? If it is a universal aggro range change, I think that's a bad idea. Do you remember what a nightmare Makeb used to be to slog through? I get wanting to make mobs closer to your level and eliminate the few places where you get zero XP or CXP because of grey mobs. And not have it where you practically have to drive right over the mob to aggro them. But its a delicate balance too because you dont want the converse true too where a pack of trash mobs feels like a heroic.

50,000 personal goal for a normal goal? 500k for a guild? No No No Why Why Why? Giving CQ points for XP earned was one of the BEST CHANGES you have made to the game in a very very long time. And now you are going to RUIN IT by more than tripling the CQ goal? Your objectives for most of the conquests are TERRIBLE, and the ones that are decent are repeatable only once a week or once daily, and that is the main issue when it comes to people bypassing CQ objectives for passive XP. I don't care if you make them worth 5x what they were before, its isnt going to make it any better. Unless you are going to make MASSIVE CHANGES to your existing conquests to make the objectives more like the ones for the Pirate Incursion: Dantooine, which is the ONLY EVENT RELATED CQ WORTH DOING due to the infinitely repeatable dailiy objectives, and add more infinitely repeatable goals, your PTS changes are going to effectively re-murder CQ and destroy all the goodwill you endeared with the passive XP changes. I'm finally able to hit the small yield goal regularly with my very small guild of friends and family and earn a few encryptions, and this is going to probably put that out of reach. The best part of the passive XP CQ change, beyond the "play what content you want and whatever character you want to play" , was that you could also play in whatever size guild you wanted to play in. Not beg to get as many toons as you can into a big guild that treats their memebers like conquest bots. And the PTS changes are going to ruin that. Increasing the personal goal to 20k or 25k, and guild small yield to 250k would be okay, but 50 and 500 is increasing it so much that interest in CQ is again going to plummet. Which is sad, Also, with gear rewards now tied to CQ, the promise of giving us more drops is not going to be fulfilled if you make grinding conquest massively harder.

I think for the most part this is not true, as set bonuses should mostly be synergistic with armorings, as long as the re-roll thing works as intended and the RNG is removed from amps. The one exception might be that for base class set bonuses, the amp you want for heal isn't going to be the same as the one you want for dps. But then again maybe there will be a choice available that works for both? I am not averse to a separate slot for set bonus, as long as it is not bound to slot.

The fallacy of the elitist is "Only the players taking on the hardest content should WANT or DESERVE top level gear." I hate this trope, and it's rolled out every time a controversial gearing change is made to defend it. I want top level gear simply because I get pleasure out of hitting things as hard as possible (or close to it). Even if that thing is a pack of trash mobs, I want my character to feel powerful. And I think the same is true for most players. I think if you look at Bioware's perspective, gearing is a carrot and they need to tune it to: "How can we get people to play for as long and as much as possible". And you are correct in that with Ossus, gear acquisition became the tail wagging the dog. If you wanted to be serious about getting gear, you needed to change the way you play the game and devote copious amounts of time to dailies and world bosses and even starfighter. I think with Spoils of War, they are hoping that the horizontal progression of "more variety, easier to acquire" will do the same or better job of getting players motivated to keep playing, keeping them on the gear treadmill without forcing them to alter what they do. And I really hope it works out, because I like that system. With a few tweaks I think it can be a successful system that works well for both the devs and the players.

I like the concept of Play What You Want. For this to work all avenues must be viable. Harder content (NIM OPs and Ranked PVP) should get you there FASTER only. The shard (Charles Points) route has to be able to get you 100% of the Harder content route, and the grind has to be REASONABLE. The deconstruction rate is going to be paramount in this equation. No more time limited missions please. I don't like the idea of vendors appearing and disappearing. I don't want to have to worry about spending my ChukBux and then the next weeks a vendor pops up with something better and I wasted my currency. Crafting mat balance is terrible in 5.0+, and crafting mat balance is going to be paramount to the viability of crafting in 6.0 Refined Isotope stabilizers are used in way too many things and that drives up the cost of Dark Projects way beyond where it should be which makes unlocking Guild Ships take longer and the Commander Compendium prohibitively expensive,. Please rebalance the Dark Project crafting mats in 6.0 or give us a better (cheaper) method to craft our way to Guild Ship unlocks and commander's compendiums. Void Matter Catalysts and the Purple conquest mat are almost useless. A rebalancing of crafting mat requirements could have fixed this. I'm ok with the augment mats currently, even if they are expensive. But the 258 masterwork crafting mat requirements are utterly ridiculous. If top level gear has the same type of requirements (absurd amount of mats also used for augments and a mat from MM Ops), crafting in 6.0 is going to be dead on arrival. Endgame crafting was IMO best in 2x-4x when crafting top level hilts and barrels was so viable and the mats were generally balanced.

Let me see if I understand this correctly: 1. Every shell, armoring, mod, enhancement in the game will have an amplifier upon its creation (whether that is from a vendor, loot drop, lootbox, or craft). The type of amp is randomly generated upon creation. 2. You can re-roll that amp for credits and MANUALLY pick what you want from a set of options specific to that type of item (not just do another loot roll). 3. Amplifier stat amounts are static across the board, and are not affected by item rating, rng, or anything similiar. If these are all true, I am perfectly ok with amplifiers, as they look like an extra layer of customization according to role, playstyle, type of content. There are amps you might want for pvp but not pve. If some gear comes with amplifiers and others do not, via RNG or not, I am going to have a problem with that. If Amplifier stat amountsvary/change via any type of RNG, I am going to have a big problem with that. When you started talking about Amplifiers, the first thing that came to mind was a certain other game's titanforging catastrophe, and that type of thing is the worst thing you could add to this game. I am not as worried as some about the balancing. You can re-balance a game. Un-implementeing a bad system is a much harder thing to do after its introduced.

The Rank reset makes me sad and disappointed as someone who has a LOT of CR 300's, although I was expecting something along those lines. It feels like I wasted my time doing all of that grinding. Over the past week I was brainstorming GC changes. One idea I came up with to keep the existing system was to drop the same gear throughout (which aligns with your smartcrate thing you are doing), but increase the drop rate of the good stuff as you gain tiers. Say something like this: 1-89 Gold 0% Purple 8% Blue 32% Green 60% 90-179 Gold 4% Purple 16% Blue 40% Green 40% 180-300 Gold 8% Purple 20% Blue 50% Green 22% 300+ Gold 16% Purple 24% Blue 60% Green 0% You could also Increase the quality and rate of the side drop (cosmetic gear, crafting mats, etc) accordingly. At a minimum, as your renown rank looks to be just a bragging rights thing, Please do not drop everyone all the way to zero. Please squash everyone to 300 instead at the beginning of each "season", and leave sub 300 rank intact. This will allow you to keep your achievements, just change them to renown rank 300. That will give those of us who ground toons to 300 at least something to show for it.

I agree, I don't like stats/set bonuses attached to the shell. I think its good to make all gear legacy so that casuals can still move it around. And it will be nice to be able to consolidate all of your old visual shells on a storage toon. But I've developed a system of sets that allows me to move stuff around quickly because of the visual look of the sets. (example: battleborn set for guardian/jugg dps, hydra on powertech/vanguard dps). I use some of the alliance crate sets for just the top tier of the gear, then retire the old set. With so many new sets coming in, I would like to still have this option.