"The Emperor? Here? We shall redouble our efforts!" - equally pathetic /unsubbed

Done. Sorry about that.

Here's what I'd love the PTS Patch Notes 4.0 to look like Some thoughts from an old school MMORPGer and subber since launch about where I'd love to see the Devs take the game. Love the game, but there is still so much more untapped potential. Overall design ambitions: Exploration: Surprise and mystery are now back in the game. Expect your exploration of old and new locations to yield chests with unique and rare items not found elsewhere in the game. And expect these to be dynamic - not always in the same place at the same time each time. Prepare to meet rare spawns moving around in random patterns. Bring a friend to take these down. Only the most powerful players will with strong companions will be able to do these solo. But the rewards span from rare decorations and trophies, to items needed in the highest end weapon and armor crafting, as well as single use recipes for hilts and weapons and power boosters Character uniqueness development: We got all these stats like accuracy, power and critical, but basically everyone goes main stat max, accuracy to 100 and the power power power. Critical and surge are just fillers. No one goes for a critical stat build. Just look at the prices of eviscerating crystals – no one buys them. We’ve fixed all these diminishing returns formulas to allow for far more diverse builds. New feature: Follow your calling! A new calling system is a separate path to further develop your character. The force alignment system is linked to your calling to develop a tanking, healing or dps calling for your character. It’s story driven across with missions across the galaxy to unlock. Gain boost to your group wide buffs for your class or enhance secondary stats to reduce force/energy costs or increase dodge or critical chance. Crafting: It matters now BABY! No longer is crafting secondary to looting high end gear. To have the highest end weapons in the game, looted components from both high end group encounters as well as using single use recipes and components from high end random spawns links the economy of crafters and looters together Don’t expect to be a master crafter in a day. Companions will have to be sent away on costly and time consuming training as well as the main character will have to undergo a demanding quest line and demonstrate the utmost knowledge of materials and techniques from all over the galaxy. Expect to travel to old worlds and find crafting masters thought long gone to master your craft. And many will not be wanting to see you, so expect to persuade through charm or force. Story: Make your own darn story! That’s what MMOs are all about. Otherwise go read a book. And for us developers, it’s very costly and very expensive to drag actors in for more dialogue across 2 factions, 4 classes each and 2 genders with multiple dialogue options and you will just spacebar through it anyway! We’d rather make unique long lasting content and an awesome playground for you and your guild to make your own stories. Remember the time when Leroy ran inn all by himself and we all died LOL. That’s the story I’m talking about Game engine: Oops we messed up here. Remember when opening up your inventory reduced framerates to more or less zero? Wondering why you can play better looking games on your old computer, but this one needs an additional 30 hamster wheels connected in series to get Alderaan to load? We fixed it now baby! PvP: This is freakin’ fun! But we keep you in this little parallel world of Arenas completely disconnected from the game. You’re just a minigame now really, with gear tiers that means that the strong get stronger and newbies get beaten silly and slapped around because you can only get the lowest end gear, while those guys that started a year ago have such good gear they keep you locked out. And guess what, there is now way of getting this PvP gear without fighting those guys! We fixed that! No more pvp gear. If you want to Pvp you got to PvE too. But open world PvP is back too. And it makes sense: It’s contributing to the overall lore and backdrop of the game. Expect to see objectives in zones lasting for 1 week at a time, where the factions battle to complete the objectives for their side. Your faction lost last week because everyone on the server are Imps? No worries, you will have generated specific credits and get new objectives unique to your faction this week to call in neutral reinforcements. Seems like those hutts and mercs sided with your faction this week. Imps are going to have to break a sweat this time. KaydonFall, Red Eclipse. (RIP SWG)

Having the same problem. I get no option to do Korriban in solo mode from the droid. Just amazed at how much Bioware breaks each time they try to fix something. It's 2 steps forwards.....and usually at best 1.5 steps backwards....sometimes 2 steps backwards Ugh. Still things that are broken in this game since launch

Weighing up my own experience I think there are many truths in the posts here, but that there is a risk of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". By that I mean that I do think there's some good in the changes from Bioware in that the "something interesting" is now more interesting. Is it interesting enough? That's another question, but it's better than what I have got before. So here's how I view the effects of the new changes: The Good 1. I am getting at least a lot more frequently speeder parts, and triangualtion of the interesting part is now easier without the disruption of the grey items. It's more foucsed digging and the speeder parts over time i still think will be more valuable then lots of grey items. The Bad 1. Sites seem to be easier to deplete now, so you can at times really struggle to find a site on Tatooine to dig for your Dread seed armor, just because the sites have been depleted. That's no fun. 2. I guess for some, a source of income from selling junk items has disappeared - I am not sure if this is a game-breaking change, since there are so many mechanics to farm for credits, but it may have been a fun thing on the side of all the digging. 3. The loot table seems to struggle with proper randomness and hence there's a lot of exploiter repulsorlifts etc in my inventory at least, where as for as with most people (I think), pleasure speeder parts are missing. Distribution of speeder parts seems to be skewed either to periods of time (for 1 week it's only dropping item x, for the next week it's only dropping item y to "make the numbers" for the wanted statiscial drop rate) or skewed towards instances, people etc, such that one individual does not experience a good distribution, but across people parts are well distributed. Trading would of course solve this, but GTN is the best market-maker for any item, and these items are not GTNable. Recommendation: (Net net I am overall in favor of the direction the changes but maybe with some new tweaks): 1. The treasure that depletes the site needs to be good. Not gray (a bug) nor boring crafting material 2. Finding the depleting item should be more difficult to keep the site open longer, allowing for searching for star forager/dreadseed armor. Maybe even get rid of depletion of sites, but rather give a warning that on entering the site, "the special treasure for this area has already been found" so we can still search for speeder parts or star forager parts. 3. Distribute randomness of drops better. (I think Bioware should look into the random roll tool they have - for example me an my guild were doing HM 55s "only" getting smuggler gear the whole time for about a week. I am mentioning that because I think it is a shared mechanic that is affecting this part of the game AND the rest of the game. 4. Make speeder parts GTNable. As mentioned earlier, this is a far better market-maker than the Trade or General chats, bring more buyers and sellers together and making price discovery easier. My 2 cents in what ended up being a long post.

Hi, Many thanks for your reply. To be even more specific about what I am seeing. I am not seeing the green health numbers appear over the targets heads, but more importantly I am not seeing my target's health going up - which is the most accurate (without the use of a parser/combat log) way to confirm. It is usually so noticeable when it works because after the stunning slams from the beast, a succesful AoE heal restores melee dps to full health. So I have seen it work and not work. The way I understand the Kolto Cloud is to be 360 degrees, but to require Line of sight. I have thought that maybe the beast itself's build could be such that it breaks LOS even for a player that appears to be within LOS, just becuase we are so close to the beast and that it's visual appearance doesn't perfectly match it's LOS rules (suggesting that the beast itself is the impediment). I will look out for ability lag. I do at times see nobody getting the heal, while the ability has gone on cool-down. That's probably the best explanation for that. The other could be a LOS issue, while it does appear to me though that the person is within LOS. However, it could be a mix of these 2 things both happening which would cause it to be problematic to diagnose. Given your thoughts and suggestions here, I think the one final thing I need to look out for is if there is a case where I myself get no heal, while others get it. That would then mean that it is not ability lag nor LOS issue (as I assume it's impossible to not have LOS on oneself). If this situation arises then something funny is going on. If this never arises then it could be explained by slightly imperfect LOS rules at times, and at other times a case of ability lag. I will be on the lookout and investigate further. Again, many thanks!

Apologies if this issue is a known issue, and apologies if it is posted in the wrong forums etc. Forum noob here. I've been noticing the following a quite a few times now (10x or more): Kolto cloud doesn't seem to heal all members in a group (4 person group), even when they (at least to me) are clearly within the 10m radius. This is particularly noticeable in say Hammer Station HM 55 FP when you have melee dps on the bonus boss. It is then critical to get an AoE heal on both the healer (myself) and the melee dps otherwise there is a risk of running out of time and energy to heal. However, I often notice that the dps standing right next to me don't get the heal, nor the tank nor myself even (which is definitely within 10m of myself). Anyone else experiencing this? Is it a bug or is there a mechanic where not everyone should get the heal (other than the radius limitation and max 4 members)? Wabbit, Sawbones healer