I know my rotation enough (I looked at the Dulfy guide and they said keep doing what I'd already been doing for years), and calling incomings is easy to pick up, but all that basic how-to-play-a-pvp-game stuff I don't know and I haven't found written down anywhere (and i don't go for videos; I can read faster than people can talk, and they're often just showing off anyways). I don't know how to get out of it when I'm getting focused, or why I get chain-stunlocked with only my 2-minute-CD break but the other guy seems immune, or why I can unload my rotation into a guy that doesn't have an immunity (that i know of) and not scratch him but he kills me in a few seconds, or how to use attacks that require charge-up against someone that keeps LOSing or circle-strafing me, things like that. Its stuff that I'm sure is derp simple to the pvp-veterans around here, but I don't know what it is. I'm not even trying for the fancy stuff to be good, keybinds and gear farming and augments and stuff, just pick-up-and-play enough to be a net positive on my team and not die constantly. If there's some Git Gud toggle out there somewhere then by all means please point it out, but otherwise it seems to be a lot of stuff someone in the deep end with. Yeah a little ranty I admit. If I'm supposed to be able to pick it up so easily as to not be a headless chicken after a few matches, then I missed something along the way.

As one of those very-very bads who's not a PVPer but has been trying to get Pierce lately....yeah pretty much. A dozen+ matches so far and I still suck, and while objectives are easy to understand, when the vets just dismissively say 'go read dulfy' and mock any questions about the super-basic stuff that dulfy doesn't cover, you just kinda resign yourself to losing every fight every match and just want to get it over with. Bads aren't enjoying it either.

Bummed from lots of little things. Still playing because want to finish all 8 class stories, but so many things I like were messed with. Comps top the list in multiple ways. Been a Bioware fan for years, forgiving a lot of questionable stuff, because they imbued so much personality in their worlds. Minsc & Boo, Canderous and HK47, Wrex and Garrus and Tali, just all the characters with their stories and strengths and weaknesses, really made me want to figure out how to work with each one and earn the whole story with them. And SWTOR had so many worthy followups like Khem Val and Guss Tuno and Gault and SCORPIO that I often went out with the wrong comp (me a sorc healer, going out with Talos for example) just to figure out how to make it work while unlocking all their stuff. All the personalities and unique quirks that make it a Bioware game. But now since every comp can do everything and all the unique skills are gone, and I can't gear them up for specific roles, and I get their story stuff just for showing up, a lot of the personality has been removed. They're just 'click here for dialogue' now. Mechanically it might work better (sucks for an Assassin tank to not get the healer till Hoth for example), but I miss the quirks and even flaws that accounted for a lot of the personality. And thats not even counting the whole Influence thing, which with a cap of 250k is just "Hahahahahahahahahaha no." Additionally, comps are just nuts as far as power level now, to the point I wonder why I'm even tagging along with them sometimes. Started a new JK on Tuesday, and so far I'm just hanging out while T7 and Kira annihilate everything in sight. One of the Heroics on Coruscant I tried dashing for the objective-item and was dumb/sloppy and pulled 5 different spawns at once, so like 15 guys with a good mix of Strong and Elite mobs. I figured I'd screwed up so badly I'd just let them kill me, respawn, come back and do it right, but instead T7 in Healer mode managed to not only keep me at full health while most of those guys pounded me, but also started slowly thinning the numbers himself despite my lack of helping. I mean I like my comps being useful and all (too many games they're useless, here they're important and thats a good thing!), but right now they've crossed the line from 'good backup' to 'plays the game for me.' If I wanted to watch someone else do everything while I hang out I'd just load a Lets Play. That said, as messed up as this situation is I'll be quite surprised if EAware doesn't do some fidgeting, because currently this is just insane. I was never a raider (never even tried an Op, don't know people so sure not gonna pug one), but I liked doing a couple FPs a week. These new bolstered tacticals though, they're just another mess. With the groups SO mismatched, characters in their teens treated as 65 despite missing core skills, and the lack of a proper team that I think in the long run is gonna dumb people down about proper teamwork, the few I've run since 4.0 have been at best really chaotic , with numerous moments of 'the heck just happened?' I'll fully admit, I'm not that good, but I'm trying to improve, but this new setup is not helping. Plus since I'm such a fan of story and such, I can only imagine the confusion of taking a genuinely new character and dropping them into Manaan or False Emperor or whatever, and with both the publicity of KOTFE and The Force Awakens in a few weeks, I'd expect plenty of confused newbies trying to sort out the story. Combine mechanics that range from 'too easy' to '***?' in the the same mission, plus story weirdness, plus teams being REALLY all over the place, I just can't see that ending well. Additionally, I play way too much Space Barbie for my own good. I collect sets from Heroics (even when I don't use them, just collect them) and spend way too many comms on orange gear from the fleet vendors just for style. I even scrounged out the ~3 million credits for an Artifact Authorization (Account) as a Preferred (3 million is a little screwy to do when you're limited to 350k at a time) just so I could use the Basic-50 Campaign gear (for the 4-piece set bonus) and was gearing up to buy a couple of the SoR sets just for cosmetic stuff. I know its all junk gear according to Serious People, but I had fun doing it. Now thats all gone, I have a couple thousand basic comms (or whatever they're called now) with nothing worth spending them on, and my two newest characters are now missing their primary source of equipment and style. I don't go for random anything or farming stuff over and over; I run Mission A, get Reward A, then run Mission B for Reward B, not some box that might drop what you want or might be something you already have, with no clue if it'll be something I ACTUALLY want till the end. Generally I don't like the CM stuff (they're usually so cluttered with extraneous stuff), and crafting oranges still means finding the right schematics or farming comp missions, and taking a lot longer than what I could do a week ago. So all rambling aside, I liked being able to just walk up to the vendor or quest-giver, give him what he wanted, take the thing I wanted, simple done. Now there is so much farming and randomization involved, its just irritating, and the only reasons I can think of for this change aren't exactly flattering to EAware. The level-scaling thing, eh I'm mixed. On one hand I can see the appeal for people rolling with friends or from a story standpoint, and even scaled down you're still quite powerful in relation. However, a lot of the time you're only sent back to those earlier planets as a timesink anyways, and its annoying when the synch makes you have to waste even 5 seconds killing the same trash spawn yet again that you've already slaughtered a thousand times before. There does need to be a point where, especially late in the game when you're a galactic legend, where the insignificant threats don't even slow you down. Call it the enemies being smart enough to know not to start a fight with you or something. But otherwise its just a blatant timesink, and those are obnoxious. I'd like to be more positive about KOTFE, since they said story oriented and lots of people have been raving about how good that story is. But since I intend to wait until the full 16 chapters are available so I can run it straight through, all I can look at right now are the changes that 4.0 makes to the original game. And of those changes, seems like most of them take something away. Since usually one expects an expansion to add things, taking things away seems like a step in the wrong direction. Edit: Holy textwalls Batman!

Sadly yes.

Do a search for Orange Vendor. There are numerous threads. Short answer is most of the vendor and heroic orange gear is now gone from the regular game, with some of it randomly dropping as rewards in Alliance boxes once you move into KOTFE. Otherwise you're mostly limited to random drops, crafting (if you can find the right schematics)m or the cartel market. Apparently the lack of randomness with farming/buying what you wanted displeased the RNG gods, and they demanded sacrifice.

One would hope. "Its available from Alliance crates" does no good for characters who aren't yet running the KOTFE stuff, and random lockboxes from the updated Heroics are certainly no substitute.

Pre 4.0, the Advanced color crystals off the cartel market were usable by anyone, even F2P and Preferred. Post 4.0, they require artifact authorization. I'm Preferred and had a couple and had purchased the full account unlock for them, but now can no longer use the things despite having paid CC for them. Is this a bug or another new feature of 4.0?

Yep, because farming the mats and schematics and grinding up the appropriate skill is soooo much more convenient than the old 'run specific Heroic, get specific reward,' or just taking your comms and buying the thing you want. God forbid the players have any control over getting specifically what they want.

There's a vendor on the fleet on the very far left end (assuming you're on the upper level facing the 'shops') that sells lvl 8 starter orange everything. Its a far cry from the variety of vendors we used to have, and being level 8 the gear comes with only the most basic of mods, but for a non-cosmetic shell like a shield or shotgun or vibroknife, you can buy whatever shell you need for 6 comms then fill it with whatever mods you need.

Don't see why they didn't just leave it alone on the original comps. Make it so they still had their full suite in their standard mode, then also have the copy-pasta assortment for alt modes, like you can use Scourge as an acceptable Healer if needed but Tanking is where he's best. Blizz with his zipline and rocket launcher, Torian with flamethrowers and wristblade, Bowdar backhanding people into low orbit, etc etc. The characters and their personalities are really what makes this game after all.

Maybe people ought to set up a group somehow for win trading or something. How many hundreds or even thousands of people are out there who want their comps but have less-than-zero interest in PVP. One team rapid-scores, the other team lets them, then rematch and switch roles. Get the misery over with. Maybe EAware is thinking of it like "PVPers do more grind and spend more in the CM, so lets try and make more PVPers." I do so hate when devs try and do social engineering.

Plus stuff in Alliance crates does zero good to people who aren't running KOTFE (aren't high enough level, have previous stuff they want to finish first, didn't buy the expac, etc) and so are SOL. I know they want to bad their numbers and tell their bosses that the player base is all over KOTFE, but moving most of the drops there to try and push us, particularly when the leveling areas are the meat of this particular mmo, thats just no bueno.

Before I could buy a lvl56 mod rated 176 for 2 comms now that same 2 'comms' buys a lvl56 168, so they downgraded just because and significantly increased the relative price of what used to cost just a few thousand credits as throwaway gear. And as for spending it on comp gifts, maybe thats important for people in KOTFE stuff but for leveling a new character its just raining Influence. I started a new JK on Tuesday, and had T7 up to over 15k Influence before I even got Kira, just from conversation approval. Plus that doesn't even count the decent welcome-to-endgame sets that are now simply gone. I want something worth spending my comms on, not garbage that a week ago wasn't worth vendoring. As for crafting, people used to be able to take their comms from missions, go buy what they wanted, all done easy peasy. People wanted to craft they could craft as they saw fit and have some extra stuff at their disposal (I did, made good leveling gear once you'd researched blues and was more cost-effective than spending comms), but it was all my choice. Now its grind mats then convert to attachments (which you can't even batch process, just one at a time), then the actual crafting (which uses far more mats than it used to), grind grind grind grind just to get back what ya already had. And if you want to craft engame stuff, you have to join in the Conquest grind too (there was a REASON most people ignored Conquest after all). If they want to give me more options, wonderful! But when they change things and take things away, removing Option A to 'encourage' me to spend more time on Option B, thats annoying.

Plus the fun that it used to be you could use basic comms to buy blue mods, keep a character well-geared as they leveled up with a wide variety of nice-looking orange shells to use for uniqueness. Now comms only buy the junk green mods that used to sell for like 2k credits, so really until you reach KOTFE, there's nothing worth spending all those hundreds of comms on. What good is a currency when there's nothing to spend it on?

Looking at a bunch of Imps doing the gank thing on Coruscant on Harb right now, open war in the senate hall. A whole bunch of particular guild all 60-65s (levelscaled but they still have their full power sets) playing gank games on newbie chars genuinely in their teens. Classy stuff. Hopefully the devs comes down hard. My guess is the newbies got flagged healing someone who was flagged or helping a downed guy or something, not realizing that flags you in turn. So yeah, not much of a 'battle.'

Maybe they ought to adjust how Group Finder works for still-leveling characters, limit them to level-appropriate FPs and unlock more as a char levels. That way a level 65 can still levelsynch down and run Hammer Station with their friends if they want, but a fresh level 15 with not even a dozen abilities doesn't get dropped into Red Reaper or Lost Island.

A F2P/Preferred still limited to 3 per week?

Having just started a new JK, by the end of Coruscant I have T7 at 15816 and Kira at 4410. And thats without gaming the system or anything, just picking conversation choices 'naturally' with no Legacy bonuses, plus half-dozen gifts that I got as random drops. So basically all pre-4.0 companion influence is now a joke.

What can you spend them on if you have a surplus but don't have KOTFE? Is there anything besides comp gifts and green item mods?

Not sure about Saving Face specifically, but I know that since 4.0 dropped: My Smuggler that just finished off Ilum on Monday night, but when I went to gear him up for the next tier of stuff on Tuesday all the vendors were gone. Wishing I'd known they were disappearing so I could have stayed up a little late and bought all my armorings ahead of time, but now I have 900+ basic comms (or whatever they're called now) and don't know what I can spend them on. Moreover, a Trouble In The Tion Hegemony mission wrapper I'd forgotten to turn in went from rewarding me a purple moddable Campaign pistol to a blue lockbox. My Agent (lvl 52) was going to go back to Corellia and finally do the Heroics4s she'd never been able to find a group for before and get the rest of the pieces of that armor set, only to find that the missions are offering blue lockboxes instead of specific orange parts of particular sets. So now she's stuck with boots pants and helmet and no chance of ever getting the matching hands and chest. A new Knight I started Tuesday, who's so far finished everything on Tython, Esseles, and Coruscant, and the only orange gear I've come across is the lvl 8 starter sets on the fleet and my starter lightsaber. So I don't know, maybe there's somewhere in the game that still does give out fixed orange gear, maybe the 60-65 bracket (I don't have early access so no idea there), but it seems like all forms of mission-reward leveling orange gear is just gone, and all that customization with it. When I let my sub lapse in a couple of days, I wonder if I'll even still get the blue lockboxes? They really are going small carrot big stick with 4.0 aren't they?

99% Huh? Yeah sure, 4.0 screwed up companions, screwed up flashpoints, took away the majority of non-cartel orange gear (a significant source of gear for leveling characters, aka the majority of the game), and added the whole level-synch thing and a ton of grind, but a few hours of incomplete story more than makes up for all that right?

Yep. A lot of cool weapons and armor just from leveling Heroics and SM FPs that was better looking than a lot of the overly-busy and often lower-visual-quality junk out of the Cartel Market, now all gone. Newly -leveling charaters are kinda screwed on gear now, short of buying that ugly starter stuff and loading it with green mods. Plus now missing the just-reached-50 Campaign gear that served as a handy start point for My First Set Bonus where you got the torso from Ilum and could build from there using Basic Comms. Seems like this expansion took away more stuff than it added.

Maybe turn Torchy into a 'sawed-off rifle' that Corso can use? I don't recall the in the original Ord Mantell dialogue if he specifically said it was a pistol after all. And how to people hate Corso??? He's a good-old-boy in space!!! Maybe he isn't your favorite but you can totally count on him to have your back. There's a lot of characters I can understand why people might hate them, but Corso???

I just wonder how newbie-to-average players are supposed to learn to play their roles now. I don't know about other people, but I learned a whole lot about proper use of a role by doing the level-appropriate flashpoints in order since they get steadily more complicated and get you to use your abilities as you obtain them, and the forced teamwork really makes you have to do your part and work as a team not just four people doing the same mission. Its especially true for people running tank and healer classes, since regular story gameplay is so different with a team than it is doing single-player stuff. Additionally, ya learn a lot about a class by seeing how players more experienced than yourself handle a role, and by when you're the more-experienced player (if only by comparison) and need to really step up when you're teamed with some extremely green teammates. It just seems like switching everything over to Tactical, a fair chunk of new players (and iffy vets like myself who still need the practice) are in for a rough time.

This whole ******* expansion..... My comps, the 8 different stories they all had together, build up that 10k rep to create a family offering to marry and raise kids and certainly go to hell and back for each other. A full maxed out crew were True Companions, even the dysfunctional crews. I expect that if someone messed with Ashara, Khem would break them in half just on principle for example. "You will not harm my Master's Apprentice." Now reduced to 4%, they, what, might return emails? They could have easily just left it 10k, made the expansion a question of building up that number with all the new comps instead. Let finished be finished and work on creating new stories instead of shredding existing ones and selling you a roll of scotch tape. Instead this moved-goalpoast is just massive grind and storywise-ridiculous. Seems to be a recurring theme with KotFE.