selecting quality doesn't always work though, for some things it does like with companion gifts before the patch you had to do it this way. but i've noticed that other areas even if you select quality, without something typed in the search area you won't yield any results. this happens with crafting missions specifically i've noticed, had to actually type "mission" or the gathering profession name before i got any results. Long story short i think it needs to either be changed to the work with the quality selection or reverted, having to know by name what your looking for without the ability to browse screws with the economy too much.

one servers frequency of games isnt the litmus test for sustainability. there's to many variables at play for one server to work as an accurate picture, maybe you have more pvpers active at the same time, maybe you have players across multiple time zones playing at all times so theres a more steady population at all times, anyway you cut it's not sufficient. As to the issue of there being queue time issues i think it has multiple causes -population density: its server dependent, but on the servers where it's problematic you get the same 8-12 people per faction on your team on a highly freqeuent basis. -warzone theme: playing against your same faction in a game that's set in a war time period between two factions. -war hero gear acquisition: this is when it becomes a grind. the biggest issue is the lack of ranked warzones, causing you to grind regular coms to then exchange. the lowest cost item is 1425 ranked coms and 200 regular coms, thats 4475 regular warzone coms, or 45 wins basically for one item. the high cost items take 2 times that. 135 wins for your earpiece/implants alone is a lot of game. -gearing rewards: the difference between bm/wh is minute. there's some changes in what stats are provided but at a certain point bm gear is more then sufficient to perform well in pvp. -Gearing as it relates to augmenting: the cost of these items vs the rate you gain credits in pvp is laughable. You maybe get 5k credits from a win, but removing the mods from any armor is 111k for 3 mods, 148k for weapons with 4 slots, and that's before you even consider the cost of the crafted armor (either farming and making it yourself or buying it) and the cost of the augments. its nice to have customization but the cost can't be met reasonably with just pvp, and for those who prefer pvp the idea of going out and grinding credits is equally unappealing. long story short i think a lot of people will hit a wall before server transfers come up. ranked warzone will buy you some time if they come out before then, but by the same token could just annoy people even more when they only have a finite population to compete with. Not to mention those that already have the rewards from ranked warzones prior to them being released, pretty looking armor isn't enough to keep them motivated.

you can exchange the empty shell to upgrade the item. I have a full suit of augment pvp gear, and have traded in an empty bm gun/chest/helm/legs so far. as to the actual stat issue: somewhat of an oversight from the way i look it, especially given that its not like you're freely exchanging pieces as you please, its basically a one time deal, so its not like you'd be constantly changing your gear/spec to what you feel like. What is further problematic is the stat design of the same gear across different tiers. There are stats on wh gear that arent found on the same type of bm gear, and the stats on bm gear differ from those on recruit. Recruit will have crit/accuracy, then bm will have crit/surge, then wh will have crit/power. So its not like you're even upgrading based on the stats you were focused on in the previous tier. It would be one thing if there was uniformity to stats, and their increases on gear, but when you get to buying wh gear and find suddenly the piece you bought in the previous tier has different stats in the new tier its hard to plan for. All of that excludes the fact that my "best in slot" items for one tier based of my spec/class is completely different by the time you get to the top tier. So if im really going for best in slot im getting 2 of a lot of bm items just so i can be the most affective while in bm gear, but still be able to upgrade to the most affective wh gear with a piece of bm armor ill never wear.

the problem is both with the ability specifically as well as its conjuncture with other abilities that make it problematic. UR specifically -the cooldown. 1.5 minutes by default, lower with talents. 5 seconds of not fearing death by itself wouldnt be so bad if you couldn't use it as frequently. -penalty for use. Sacrificing your health doesn't seem substantial enough (has a lot to do with other abilities). If it had some incurred penalty, like a reduction to healing received it would be another story. WIth other abilities -careful planning gets you a "get out of jail free card." The combined effect of the reduction in damage, followed by the in combat stealth creates far to many situations where the marauder can be healed to full, or simply escape as they've stacked enough buffs to get the sprint by the point they use it. -by the time this ability is used in the vast majority of situations your opponents health is roughly equal to your own, and marauders arent exactly lacking on dps.

i think part of the problem with the group quests, is that for a lot of them you dont have to group to complete them or you can avoid them all together and still level to the appropriate level on that planet before moving on (there are some exceptions). So when you get to the higher levels you have this whole solo mentality make it less likely for people to group for the stuff you need to group for.

you see... the world dont move to the beat of just one drum, what might be right for you may not be right for some. Seriously though in phrasing that original post, did it even occur to you that for your theory to be correct you homogenized the entire pvp community into one stereotype? pvpers ruin games? is there some secret cabal where pvpers forced bioware to place pvp in a game that takes place during a galactic war that i don't know about? Cause if not its kind of hard to blame someone for ruining something they dont create. this whole pvp ruins pve argument is a joke. Just because npcs dont post on the forums calling for nerfs doesnt mean certain classes that excel in pvp don't also excel in pve more so then other classes. saying pvp or pve is better for an mmo is like someone giving you a quarter and telling you that you only want 12 and a half cents of it. Ill take the full value of the coin thank you very much.

if you didnt say 'while leveling" id tell you to get on it, max level you produce one of the best pve belts/bracers and can craft augment gear (pvp or pve). While leveling though, you just get better gear from questing, with orange items from class quests/world coms and the mod upgrade most armormech schems wont surpass these relative to your level.

2 out of the 3 stuns you shouldn't cc break from, one's duration is too short (its supposed to be 3 seconds but its bugged) and the 2nd is short and on a 1 minute cd. The only cc you should be breaking out of is debilitate (and the smuggler equivalent). people also fail to realize an ability that puts you at full resolve will still have its full duration applied. Now then on to the gear problem issue. Im assuming that because of your expertise you have a mix between recruit gear and some battlemaster, and your opponent is battlemaster or higher. Now if you look at battlemaster gear relative to recruit, most people just stare at expertise, but when you look at the other stats you see a huge gain in dps based stats. For operatives/agents in particular theres a large crit/surge gain between recruit and battlemaster. expertise isn't this master stat people make it out to be, it just sucks when you don't have it. once you do the damage gained vs the damage reduced is only like a 4 % buff. the last thing to note is this: the way operatives kill you is by bursting you hard in the beginning, then widdling away at whats left or your life. the longer you draw out their initial attack the harder it becomes to kill you. If you break what is usually the 2nd cc applied to you, and kite its night and day.

so are you just supposed to exclude things that become fixed from patch notes because they dont have the greatest priorrity? don't get me wrong we all pvp, but youre not just gonna flip a switch and solve the problem, nor does it become your only problem to deal with.

and when do we get to the part of the story where there's cc breaks, taunts, guards, your own chance to apply cc after said cc break is applied? or how bout the part where there are other classes who can pull of the same duration of cc through stunning? or the part that the agent specific stunning requires an ability with a cd of 1 minute to be up?

not saying i dont find it annoying, but it does reinforce the idea of having alts and experience the other stories. I dont necessarily have a problem with that in and of itself, and am more lenient with the idea of using different classes to fill different roles, where it becomes problematic for me is filling the same role with a different spec. Certain specs are better for pve then pvp, and vice-versa, even while filling the same role (ie dps). The cost of respecs+ the spec differences has lead me to reserve one character solely for pvp, and another for pve, just because of the cost of respecs. The kicker is I use both those characters as dps. While it's nice to mix it up and have options, there are specs (some classes more then others) that are more pvp and pve oriented, which is fine except with the idea of switching between specs to enjoy multiple parts of the game on the same character. I think duel spec is an easier fix then the other options (not that ease needs to be your defining characteristic for acting). If you take those "pvp oriented specs" and adjust them to make them more viable in pve you run the risk of making it imbalanced in pvp. If you take my pvp spec and fix the main complaints about it as it applies to pve, suddenly i have more energy for more damage, further imbalancing me in pvp.

i like the concept, the execution on the other hand favors certain classes/'team makeups over others beyond the point of simply having a well rounded team.

does complaining about luck of the draw in terms of class makeup seem a bit of a stretch? i would say yes but i seem to recall a dev stating that groups of classes cause people to unsubscribe......

rail shot hits for 10k?......how exactly does an ability that base is around 1800 damage somehow crit for 6 times that amount? even with the 90 percent armor theres no way you have that much surge or power.

expertise isn't the issue, its not like it buffs your dps to the point that healing can't compete. Look at your damage gained versus your damage reduced from expertise: the damage gained is about 3 percent more then damage reduced. If i have 18 % reduction and 21% damage, against similarly geared players thats only a 3% gain in damage. As a healer you're dealing with a 3 % damage increase with a 15% increase to healing. thats not to say there aren't issues, it's just hard to say that the problem is based in expertise. healing becomes only becomes an issue in focus fire situations, one on one or even 1v2 it's fine. Its more then likely class related and do to imbalances. additionally and theres to much to consider to list it outright, but people dont exactly engage in the most affective use of their damage reducing talents as relates to group play. Ever notice how those tank acs specced dps usually have really low protection rating at the end of a game even though they still have access to all those taunts from being a tank ac, which doesn't jeopardize their survivability by using them?

i'm not saying its a little lackluster in what it offers, but it does offer you "unique modifications." Granted the part that makes modification plural is that it offers you multiple modifications for the same item slot. But its not inaccurate, its just not congruous with your expectations for it. my question is what did you expect it to be as it relates to your droid? You don't need to "gear" him up, you have companions that do better healing, and better dps, who are easier to gear (for the most part, see below). The droid operates almost exclusively for the purpose of crafting, and you get bonuses to crafting from buying the items (at least at max level). I will say that the purchasable droids items could have been dealt with a little better, just for the purposes of "alts" and their use of the companion droid while leveling. It could have been a means to gear up the droid to heal especially for those classes which dont get a healing companion for some time. But you also have to consider that you can't gut the part of cybertech that produces droid stuff because you have a droid that sells stuff on your ship.

A: you're not being forced to pay for anything, you make a choice to pay for the a transfer to the server of your choosing. they're still offering free transfers, and free transfers first. b: if you can't rationalize why you wouldn't just give a free pass to anywhere you choose due to the populations issues that would cause beyond where we are at now, i can't help you.

long story short until people want to help people succeed instead of railing on them when they fail its not going to happen. Not saying the op acts like this, but in my experience it occurs far more often then not. There are certain players on my server that you know you're not going to get through a game without them complaining, even when we're winning. evidently its too much of a stretch of the imagination to think that someone you're a jerk too might not be motivated to help you be rewarded with a win.

why would you even need to do that? the damage reduction from expertise relative to the damage gain from expertise means against similarly geared players you have like a 3 % damage bonus. your damage gets buff by 18 percent but the damage reduction is 15.

and for the situations where it is one v one and they can kill you before reinforcements arrive? or when youre in a group and they jump in and drop your buddy in a matter of seconds while taking 5 points of damage per ability?

they're cooldowns take my cooldowns out to the shed and their never seen or heard from again, and im a jugg tank.

the population on the fleet doesnt exactly reflect the entire server population, its a good benchmark especially to judge your max level population. At 50 youre on the fleet, illum, belsavis, or correllia, when you're not pvping. But if you're pvping you're probably on the fleet. All operations start on the station, all flashpoints save 2 start are on the station as well. that being said youre population is better then other servers who are worse off. my server was one of the larger pvp servers at launch and we average about 150.

its going to last forever, unless they actually remove it. there's enough variables involved in population density and population behavior (interaction with other players) to suggest the plague will be around for a while. All it takes is one person blowing up to infect multiple people. Case in point: alts, specifically alts that aren't played for long durations of time. I have 3 50's, one of which i really only use for crafting, so i only log on in for 2-3 minutes at a time. Long story short he still has his initial infection from when the event started and hasn't exploded yet. the real kicker is the fact that he only resides by the gtn, usually by the mailbox, so he's a ticking time bomb. Granted i could just cure it but im lazy. On top of that you throw in pvp to the mix (i've gotten 75 dna samples since the event ended and i only pvp on that character specifically). Additionally you have ops (7-15 people to be infected not counting the carrier), flashpoints (3 people to infect), and just general space station interaction. just think about overlapping interactions and you get the picture -all classes use the same elevator point to go to their ship -mailboxes -gtn -pve/pvp vendors -fleet pass returning people to the same point on the gtn. -50's congregate on the station, illum, belsavis, and correllia primarily. -ops/flashpoints -pvp -different level players on the same planet (ie going back to a previous planet due to class quest etc) -people going to dk to buy legacy weapons. progression (lets assume the infection rate is the same, ie you infect four people at a time) round 1: 1 person infected round 2: 4 people infected round 3: 16 people round 4: 64

essentially if you merged the gtn, you would most likely reduce prices, but increase sales. May even improve the population imbalances between factions. Republic getting access to the more populated imperial market gains more then imperials getting access to the republic market.

the rank 7 boxes are probably worth it since the rank 7 boxes would only contain the purple quality items for crafting, (all other gathering from players is maxed at grade 6). The grade 6 boxes have too much of a "luck of the draw" you might get some blue quality items (no predicting what profession its for). I grabbed like 10 boxes of the grade 6 stuff and it was all crap, i was hoping it would have a chance at biometric crystal alloys but no luck.