Is that what's going on? I noticed some of my keybinds are outright gone and re-applying them from a preset didn't seem to make a difference. Even in my preset, it appears some are just gone from the preset. Most everything I had set to a keybind for quickbars 5 and 6 is just unbound now, and the one that stuck around was bound to a slot in quickbar 5 and is now bound to a slot in quickbar 6.

The inventory UI is like what you'd expect a templated prototype to look like before an artist has gotten ahold of it. Probably the worst UI I've ever seen in a video game and I don't say that to be hyperbolic, I honestly can't recall worse UIs that I've seen.

Understanding that other people are not all at your same skill level and the game shouldn't revolve around how good you are is incredibly easy to empathize on. Get on my level, nub. Practice that empathy more.

And they made it harder for those players who only play a few hours, which is in contradiction to your BS reasoning that it's about appealing to the masses... how many times do I have to say it until it clicks.

I said they could do "some kind of diminishing returns on the credits when you repeat them outside of a daily&weekly reset." instead of nerfing them for everyone in response to your point about it supposedly being to appeal to the masses and your response is that I want the rewards and a not-so-subtle attempt to put me in the same category as people you suspect of being credit farmers. You obviously didn't read a word I said, no point in supplying you with more words for you to not read.

I've been doing more vet FPs lately and this stuff kills me. Shortcuts that aren't really shortcuts because it has to be flawlessly executed by every member of the group and the chances are high at least one person won't. Not to mention clueless newer players who have no idea what's going on with all the elaborate shortcuts being used. I had an Athiss run recently where (as is often the case) one person was struggling to make that ridiculous jump people insist on doing with the weird angle. They kept failing it over and over, finally they tried to run through (must have been a newbie) and pulled both trash groups. Somehow we managed to kill the 1st one while getting out of combat with the 2nd (I did do a stealth out at some point in the fight, that might have been it, RIP stealthing out of combat in FPs INC). So then they respawn and we have to wait for them to run back. They proceed to fail at the jump a bunch more. Finally, I just pulled the 2nd trash group. Died in the process cause I rushed it and the others had to get there, but we still took it out. I was concerned if the other person took much longer, people were going to get annoyed and kick them and they don't deserve that over such a ridiculous jump expectation. Plus I wanted to get going. We prob wasted a good 5+ minutes just because of people mindlessly insisting on that jump. It's like this unwritten rule that people go for it, even though so often there's someone who struggles with it. Defies reason. I have to say though, on the flip side of it, some people just won't speak up for themselves. I think of that trash avoidance routine in Directive 7 with the tents and using a mount. Some people will ignore the rest of the group doing it (keep in mind, I try to give people time to catch up so they can see what I'm doing even if others are running ahead), hang back in seeming confusion, say nothing, and then as if backed into a corner of thinking they have to overcome the problem with sheer force of will, attempt to run through the trash. It's almost funny. I never see someone in those situations go "hang on, idk how to get through, little help?" or anything like that. It's always wordless inaction, followed by derping into mobs. I can imagine for some it might be intimidating to ask when they see people rushing through so confidently, but personally, I'd rather someone stop a moment to ask what to do or ask for us to pull the trash instead than derp into a group of trash mobs. Often, those sort of pulls are very messy and can wipe a group if bad enough because those people will have a tendency to somehow aggro every mob in the near vicinity lmao. The thing that amazes me most across so many FPs is how many people neglect to use the Chat function when a little communication would make a big difference. I had a Czerka Core Meltdown recently where it was pretty obvious after a totally unnecessary wipe that some people didn't know the sandstorm fight, so I asked in chat and one person said they'd never done it. I explained the fights throughout the FP after that, but it's just like... they could have said so from the start. T_T

That only addresses the credits aspect of it though, not the other nerfs. If that was the concern, they could just make it so there is some kind of diminishing returns on the credits when you repeat them outside of a daily&weekly reset. Also, your argument doesn't really hold in general because if "games are designed to appeal to the masses" is the justification, why would they make conquest less rewarding and harder *for everybody* because (according to your estimations) those who have a ton of alts aren't the majority. They didn't *just* make it harder and less rewarding for people with lots of alts, they made it harder and less rewarding for all players. In other words, making the game worse for everybody because supposedly some are abusing it is hardly appealing to the masses... it's more like chasing away the masses because they're too ineffectual at design to reign in exploitative or unfairly advantageous use of mechanics in ways that are limited to said exploitative or advantageous uses of them. Screwing with general use of mechanics to reign in the actions of a minority of players; the saying "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" comes to mind.

Well said. Never ceases to amaze me when a game with a huge amount of alt play built into it (character slots, different class stories, etc.) treats having more than a couple alts like the redheaded stepchild of playstyle. It doesn't even make sense from a cynical business standpoint. Discouraging people from playing their alts means they have less reason to log in when they are bored with doing the same old same old lack of regular content and want variety, less reason to buy cosmetics for varying characters and looks, etc.

Good luck to you too, take care.

If the attitude of the devs holds true to the way that director video was, I could see it maintaining a strong population on that energy alone. Players are so starved for developers that listen to them even a little bit.

Giving me Office Space vibes, like: "We fixed the glitch." "So... the instance bleedthrough issue will no longer occur." "Hold on there, professor, ah, we 'fixed the glitch.' We added in groups of mobs that spawn on the player to mess up how they're exploiting it. We prefer to let these things work themselves out naturally."

Good points and yeah, I wasn't thinking about how the store would compel them to keep it going to get some easy revenue continuing to come in, even if they aren't updating it anymore. I guess the only question there would be if there are issues with renewing the license when the current one runs out, but they can probably negotiate a token license to keep it running if need be, even if they aren't updating it anymore.

You're waiting 30 minutes? I go in and they have it ready because I put in the order prior over the phone or through online and they notified me when it was ready for pickup. And that's for a physical item that requires a person to do labor to make it happen. We're talking about bits of digital data (CC) and getting access to them after charging other bits of data (your card) to a data system (whatever servers and account systems are involved). The only labor involved is in the creation and maintenance of it, not the delivery process itself.

Thanks for all the info on it, folks. Yeah, I find it annoying too. Part of the reason I wanted to ask is if I was being annoyed at the way it was always supposed to be, or if they ruined it for no good reason.

Maybe along the lines of what you're saying here, they are being asked to meet financial targets they can no longer meet with the resources they are allocated (which are not nearly enough) and so they are desperately trying to meet those targets by running on fumes, but the only way they can come up with to do that is to change the game in ways that makes things worse. So it's just a feedback loop of awfulness that ends up looking like sabotage. But yeah, I really think people who anticipate they will still enjoy the game after 7.0 should be thinking carefully about what they haven't done yet that they still want to do because this game may not have much left in it and I don't want people to be shocked thinking they had all the time in the world to get it done. Ideally, the sunset of this game will be it getting token maintenance long into the future, or it will get turned into something people can do with co-op or offline, but you never know with EA what they will pull. They aren't exactly compelled by ethics.

Lol, patch notes are gonna be like: - Fixed an issue where players were enjoying themselves too much. In the words of Davik Kang, "Sorry! But that ain't gonna happen." (Davik's left sock now available for purchase in the CM) - Known issues: things that make players want to uninstall the game. We are looking into a fix for 2-3 of these issues with 8.0 release. Thank you for your patience while we maintain what's left of Star Wars The Old Republic .

So I figure someone here who has played heavily since the beginning can prob answer this. Republic's Most Wanted is that instanced coruscant heroic with the five named mobs you have to kill, along with some miscellaneous trash. The way I remember is it it's all static mob groups, but since I came back, I noticed it's got a few different areas where you cross a threshold and a group of mobs spawns on you. My question is if it was originally that way where mobs spawn on you and it was broken the way I remember it in the past? Or if they added the spawning mobs in later (which I don't want to believe, cause that would be odd, considering how panned spawn mob encounters tend to be).

I'm with you on that. I hate tedious filler content, it's my primary complaint about expansion content since KOTFE and after. Fast content that is fun to repeat is where it's at. I can deal with story that isn't "the most amazing story ever told," that doesn't bother me much. But if I have to wade through hordes of CC spamming and spongy trash mobs to do it, I'm like you, I'll do it on one character, maybe two, to see it and then I'm done. One of the most egregious examples that bugs me to this day is:

I want to know how they even thought it was being abused. The only place I've seen it used in group PvE so far is skipping one extra trash pull in Hammer Station that's hard to skip otherwise. Edit: Also, it's even weirder when you consider they had to have thought people would use it for the obvious use cases like trash skipping when they made it so idk what the heck is going on. Like does it work the same way in PvP? And if that's the concern, couldn't they just make it work differently in PvP? Smells like BS.

Well I took quite a break some time after I got burned by thrill of the hunt. I don't remember the timeline exactly. Actually, break would be an understatement, I had no intention of returning. I feel like I briefly was there for 6.0, but I don't remember to what extent. Anyway, I came back right before the expansion got delayed figuring I'd give it a look for old time's sake and have since got some gear and tacticals that will be useless in a few days, so that's fun. I have no interest in making about it me though. My main concerns here are something like: giving people an insulting compensation for deleting their items (almost worse than nothing at all); the inconsistency of deletion (some people will feel it a lot, others won't at all); the lack of warning until the last minute; the incomprehensible nature of some of the deletions (some of the reasons given make no sense... crystals deleted bcuz people are getting higher power potential in 7.0 when all evidence points to the opposite?). Some people wanting currency refunds for their deleted items is only a fraction of the issue here and reducing it to "well MMOs make stuff obsolete with expansions" is a very misleading representation of the sloppiness of what's going on here. There is nothing standard about the operating procedure here in the way it's been carried out. At least, not relative to what most people would consider professional for a paid product. There is simply no excusing nonsense like announcing the deleting of the crystal/schematic that you can only buy with gree tokens *during* an ongoing gree event (rather than warning long before, or setting up the scheduling for the gree event to not reoccur again until the crystals were gone). There is no excusing the randomness of choices as to what tactical is deleted, what is integrated into class, what is kept around, and the complete lack of thought put into how randomly this will affect some players more and not others. It's just unprofessional. I mean, I don't care if you're a 1 person development team or 300, a little communication goes a long way. A little forethought into how changes will impact your players goes a long way. And as poor as this studio has behaved in the past, I don't remember them being this sloppy. Making hated design decisions, yes, but being this inconsiderate toward their players? Idk, maybe I'm remembering too generously, but this seems worse than they've ever been.

Well good thing everyone has been here since 6.0, played the same amount of time you do or more and hasn't bought gear in 6 months or more. How silly for people to take issue, given their experiences are exactly identical to your own in every way.

I love how you think this is some clever putdown and you're basically just arguing that people shouldn't participate in these hackneyed gear treadmill systems that have plagued MMOs for so long. Because if you take "who buys gear right before an expansion" to its conclusion, there is no right time to buy gear. You are always in a race against time before they make it obsolete again or outright delete it. Some people just have more time on their hands to get it faster so they can use it for longer. There's another fun element to this too. Advocating for people to not buy gear leading up to an expansion is essentially advocating for them to not play the game leading up to an expansion, since gear is built to be such an integral part of the game. It really goes to show how nonsensical these systems are and it's quite amazing they've been considered normal for so long. "Just sit on your hands and change how you play in anticipation for an expansion, or better yet, don't play at all, don't want to waste your time on things that are going away!" I don't know when "expansion" started meaning "reset," but it's pretty silly when you put it in perspective. WoW really did a number on the MMO genre. Dunno if that damage will ever be undone.

Out of the way in the sense that it's way into the expansion content, long after the part where your companions are lost if you play the story in order without skipping, so it makes sense someone might get partway in and start wondering when, if ever, she's going to return. Don't forget that those of us who played during KOTFE/KOTET (prob you included) had long stretches of time where it was unclear when certain companions were ever going to return, so "who knows when" became the normal mindset about it and they never exactly painted the locations of companion return in bright red letters anywhere in-game. It sort of just happens... story includes one or an alert becomes available, and then you get them back, or have the option to.

I hear a train comin over the horizon, It's got the sound of a changes that are risin, It's comin hot, oh it keeps on chuggin, It's comin fast, got my eyes all buggin, ouut. It's scarin me, no douubt. It's bringing changes that are: Sock to the left, Sock to the right, Give a little gift, Peck goodnight, Throwin stuff away, with all their might, So I'm told, it's their right, To pick it apart, we pick it apart, Tell them it's trash, they throw it in the trash, Not that part, leave that alone, Come on, devs, throw us a bone! Not that kind of bone, that's actually dead, Where'd you get that? From the undead? From the graveyard of inspiration? From some years of perspiration? Sweating on nothing and no one, what? Why are we getting a game of mutt. A combo of awful, spliced together in a lab, A frankenstein's monster of opened tabs, Attention deficit in all the right places, Oh how I'll miss the familiar faces. Facing down the remnants of care, Ten long years, the husk of SWTOR laid bare. (idk if this supposed to be more like a song or a poem lol, but it was fun to write. whenever this game really does die, I'll miss y'all who did what you could to make it better)

It is pretty generous to let us keep some things. Usually with an expansion you'd expect them to delete all of your characters and then break into your home and steal your computer, but now you can keep some of your tacticals and a few widgets you've stockpiled to buy you like a whole one item in the new artificial gear treadmill, that's just unfathomably nice of them. I know people are like "I want my progress to matter, I'd like to keep some of the things I put months of my life into," but if you kept stuff, then how would you be able to put more months of your life into getting things they'll take away again? That makes it kind of hard to waste this one life we have on a purposefully sisyphean progression treadmill in a video game designed to keep you subbing in lieu of them actually providing new and interesting content. I mean, doing a business is hard and if they are not making millions in revenue each quarter, then what is even the point of overworking underpaid employees to deliver systems specifically designed to keep people coming back for virtually nothing.