For me (level 1 PT and naked): Mastery 268 Endurance 119 Presence 619 That's all Datacrons up to and including Onslaught.... but no contribution from putting shards together (do shards count towards legacy or is that a per character thing? I've never even put one together).

No big deal for any of us that got the Nautolan unlock for free as subs... I can imagine how annoyed I'd be if I paid CC for the dang things. So, while the moral may be as you say, it's still good to put it out there and hopefully someone reading this may at the very least do more research before purchasing the species. FWIW, the clipping in animations varies widely from one class to another. Shooter types don't have as many problems as light saber wielders when it comes to extremely awkward and disappointing animations. The hard part with Nautolans is figuring out what combos work (in terms of armor preference, character body type, and animations) until after you made one and started playing it. I would highly encourage anyone making a Nautolan to play it a bit before spending credits on character unlocks and the like so that you can re-roll if changes need to be made.

To give some numbers to this... Going from level 20 to level 30 you'll save about 300,000 credits using type 2 over type 5. 747 type two gifts cost 448,000 credits 75 type five gifts which cost 750,000 credits. I have the first two unlocks to speed up the gifting process (200k + 400k). I figure it takes me roughly 30 minutes of clicking to use type two gifts over type five. That's not terrible if I'm watching a movie and just mindlessly clicking but it's also 30 minutes that I could be not clicking. So, how important is it to save 300k? Up to the player. If you're wondering how many type 1 gifts it would take from 20-30, it's twice as many as type 2 at 200 credits per gift so somewhere in the area of 300k. You'd save an additional 150k (for a total of 450k saved), but now you're clicking for an entire hour longer than you would with the type five (purple) gifts. Personally, I use type 1 gifts from 0-15.. that's just short of 200 gifts. 15-20 I use the type 2 gifts (175 of them). From there I use purple/type5 all the way to 50 influence (433 purple). I think that's the best compromise between time and expense. I haven't crunched the numbers to maximize credits, regardless of time spent, because the time cost would start to get absurdly high unless the person were using some sort of macro. Also, just to put it out there. From influence 30 to 40 it would be: 2122 type 2 at 33 points each (cost 1,273,200 credits). 132 type 5 at 532 points each (cost 1,320,000 credits). Is it worth clicking nearly 2000 times more to save about 50k credits? Probably not. Please excuse any rounding errors as these are just my notes and weren't really prepared with sharing in mind. Speaking of saving time, I wish I knew of this sooner! Well done!

[misread; delete]

Master's Datacron (with or w/out the "and equipment" part) will grant level 70 without completing anything. Commander's Token is the one that auto completes some of the story (but also creates an additional character slot). It's essential to play chapters 1-9 in one go in order to guarantee the romance. If there's an update in that time frame, before completing chapter 9, then you need to start over from the beginning of Ch 1 and run through all chapters again. Once you complete Ch. 9, the decisions are saved and there's nothing you can change on the current character. Nothing is guaranteed though. I did everything correctly and still lost Lana romance on one of my toons; never did figure out why. It's just all around buggy.

Granted, I've only played for a year... They seemed to keep up with it, no problem, for 80% of my subscription at least. This problem only started in earnest a month before Onslaught. As for leaving, plan on it!

Twice as long? I feel like it took 3-4 times as long. I dropped before even getting to the swarm b/c I only had so many credits with me. I'm not even making enough credits now to cover the repair bill. I suppose I'm thankful to Bioware... I'll actually do something productive this winter rather than playing this game. Maybe I'll come back if and when they un**** themselves.

I'd love to see a graph mapping the profits from launch until now. Yes, it's cool that they made over 1 billion over the life of this game... I imagine that the growth rate is much much smaller now. So, unless you have a link that shows a spike in profits over the last two years, those numbers don't mean much to me.

No argument that things are harder for small guilds.. it's harder for large guilds too. Have you gone after the Ossus bosses since 6.0 launched? It's one of the objectives this week. We (eventually) beat the tin can and it was as boring as it could possibly be, just wasted time in my opinion. I dropped from the group before we went after the bugs because I already burned through the credits I had on me for armor repairs on the first boss. I will NOT be doing the Ossus bosses again; it's not worth it. Nothing is worth it, for me. I used to love doing conquest and the rampages. I enjoyed heroics when I didn't need to team up half the time. The rewards for weeklies? Not worth it either. My biggest frustration is that I used one of those Amazon 90 day subscription cards so I'm stuck wasting my money for the next six weeks. I think complaining on the forums might be the only way I get my money's worth until then. At least the new droid pet is cool, that's about the only thing I'm happy about right now.

This forum is the one place any of us have to officially complain about game play changes. It's the only place. If you do so in-game to customer service, you are directed to post on the forums. So, the op comes along and gets things off their chest... that's not being self-righteous. Everyone commenting in this thread had a choice to ignore it or engage. Everyone who chose to engage had a choice to do so constructively or to troll. Granted, the same is true for the op who could just ignore anyone that they don't feel is being constructive. Pretty sure most of what could be said from either perspective was likely said by the third or fourth page. I wasn't here at the start, so I said my piece now. With that, I'm moving on to more productive endeavors and maybe I'll log back in over here in a week or two.

Don't feel like arguing with holier-than-though types that enjoy being contrarian in the forums.... Just want to say to the OP, I'm right there with you. They lost a sub as soon as mine runs out, b/c that's the only way the devs are going to hear any sort of votes. With all the changes, this certainly isn't "playing my way." I get zero enjoyment out of hitting the NPC twice as many times and now dying if I don't set my comp on heal all the time. Heroics were fun, now they just drag. Weeklies now lack any incentive with the change to Galactic Renown. I don't feel like farming HS and RR to gear up so now I'm under-geared for OPs and not participating at all. So, there's no reason to be a sub any longer. I'm just going to let it expire and "play my way" which translates to revisiting the core stories while the game is still around.

All this. And before anyone chimes in with the usual "of course there is clipping issues, whatdaya expect!?!" No, Nautolans do feel rushed and sloppy. Anyone that proudly proclaims that they haven't seen it simply haven't run enough of the possible combinations. It's not just armor clipping, which is expected, but tentacles clipping themselves before you add any armor into it. Animations are sloppy. Most seem fine for pew pew types but try some of those head choices with a Jedi/Sith Nautolan and when they take their combat stance it looks like their tentacles were sat on by Darth Baras. Many of the combinations simply do not work. It's difficult to tell until you make a character, log in, and play with it a bit. Once you know what works and what doesn't, it's not a big deal... but, that's poor design if we the users have to figure it out ourselves and the character creation fails to account for possible problems. My proposed solution is this... Make all in-game appearance change free so long as you don't change the species itself. It can be put on a timer, four weeks, maybe (four hours would be sufficient).. ? Then we can change the color if we don't like the way it actually looks in-game. If we notice one style of head causes a bunch of problems with animations, we can change it, in-game. The need to constantly re-roll toons because of all the unforseeable problems is unique to Nautolans and doesn't apply to Cathar, Togruta, etc.

I've been biting my tongue.. trying to give 6.0 a chance before complaining too much. The first thing I noticed, on day one, was that I couldn't face roll the heroic on CZ. This was an easy enough fix, I just had to turn my companion on heal which I previously avoided for most content. I could still get away with turning the channeled heal off for a little bit more DPS. So, an annoyance, but not a game breaker by any stretch and probably a realistic change given that I'm talking about a heroic mission/objective. That's about as far as I can agree with the OP. I don't find my lower health pool (and the necessary comp always on heal to compensate for this) adds any challenge to the game; it just adds annoyance. Likewise, the fact that enemy NPCs take longer doesn't up the challenge, it just makes it take longer. We don't have more difficulty in any entertaining sense, we just have a bunch of changes that slow the game down and make most combat long, dull, and boring. Adding mechanics, adds, puzzles... sure, those things add difficulty the right way but just nerfing our damage and health relative to the NPC we are fighting does nothing for me. So, me personally, I'll take facerolling through mobs and golds over monotonous repetitive clicking that adds no dynamic other than more clicking of the same buttons. Playing a low level toon through DK last night was a real eye opener for me. I have all the perks of being an established player (bonuses from datacrons, a full heroic bar, etc.) and even that wasn't sufficient for my level 20 something Sin and Khem (somewhere in the area of influence 10). Friends of Old which is listed as a Heroic 2+ is barely soloable now. I died four times trying to complete this heroic, once by the mob and three times by the hand of Lord Tytonus. I doubt that I would have had an issue playing through with a level 70+ toon that has some defensive abilities but playing a lower level toon I don't have as many options. I finally did manage to get through this mission once the CD on my heroic moment was up and I was able to just lay on a heavy dose of DPS. It took a Heroic Moment to get through, a feature that many new players won't be able to take advantage of. Of course I can just increase the influence of my companion (since then, I've taken Khem up to about 41 and increasing) but again, new players aren't going to have the credits to significantly increase their comp's influence level; this is a problem. So being objective about this, there are a lot of variables to consider... level and available abilities to start, companion influence, companion type (ranged/melee), player type, etc. What may work for one person playing a level 75 toon with a level 50 companions isn't going to translate. The changes don't seem to account for these variations at all. The "difficulty bump" as you put it is going to chase newer players away. I've only been playing a year, this is my first MMO. I'm learning. If it were this level of difficulty when I started, I would have never moved on from F2P. Bioware/EA wouldn't have gotten the last ten months of subscription fees from me. Just something to consider given that this game is aging and its player base already shrinking. It's important to let the development team know that you approve of the changes, but frankly, I'm not sticking around if all of these changes stick.

I've only been playing a year, but you are currently seeing an expected upswing in players due to the new release. If I had to guess, I'd say we are seeing an increase of population of somewhere in the area of +35% although that could vary by server. I don't personally think 6.0 will turn this game around; it's just a speed bump. I actually wish I hadn't subscribed for the next 90 days as I'd rather take a break now and wait for the dust to settle and then reevaluate. At the moment, I don't even want to play anymore (I'm that upset with the changes.. all the fun has been sucked out for me, personally. But a lot of that is just the feeling of being overwhelmed with all the changes so I can't fairly evaluate right now). I guess what I'm saying is that right now, this minute, isn't the best time to ask this question. I'd wait a couple months until after the shell shock wears off and then see where things are trending. For me, personally, the original eight class stories are the best part of the game. So, enjoy them!

That would satisfy me. It's not that I can't find combinations that work, but that I'd basically have to change the head shape every time I changed an outfit in order to minimize the issue. It just feels really sloppy to me, the way they designed this. It's certainly possible to find working combinations, but it actually takes work where usually it doesn't. The pony tail thing seems to be the best bet, but feels so limiting (but like you say, if I could turn it on/off, that would satisfy that problem for me). I totally expected it. I didn't expect it to be this bad. I've never once complained about Togruta or Twi'lek and I have a bunch of them. Usually the clipping is minor enough that I can easily ignore it but I'm finding the Nautolans exceptionally difficult to work with. I'm just disappointed. But at least I didn't pay to unlock this, in which case I'd be extremely disappointed.

Sadly, not true. Maybe it depends on which head you choose which creates another dilemma. You really need to play with variations to get anything to work.. one style works for type three body and another for type two.. and of course armors vary depending on "hair" style too. For my type three, I settled on 41 which is one of the styles that is all towards the back and nothing hanging in the front. It works with *most* of the armors I've matched it with. At least until you enter combat, then it just looks like someone ran over my tentacles and they are bent, crooked, flat... just awful. I deleted that toon. I give up on Nautolans, I've wasted too much time trying to find working combinations. This is a massive fail.

Thanks... I'm never NOT going to see this now. lol

Based on my own experience, that's likely an average time which is wayyyyyyy too much effort for character creation. Granted, it would help if they didn't combine facial features with tentacles and create like 60 variations which are difficult to quickly compare. By the time I started making a second one, I had to start taking screen shots of variations just so I could compare them (something I've NEVER had to do with any other species in this game). So, anyway, you are not alone. So far I've only made one and haven't even played the new content yet due to how much time I wasted in character creation. In regards to clipping... it's not like this is just a problem with bulging armors and jet packs... I'm having annoying clipping issues with Bold Hellion of all armors.

Same... But lots of players don't have multiple alts running in large conquest guilds and/or the time to make conquest points on multiple toons. Conquest has only gotten more difficult with Galactic Rampage apparently being removed as well as NPCs taking longer to kill due to the changes in level syncing with 6.0. Not sure what the new rewards will be, but I doubt CMTs will continue to pull in many credits. I could afford 7mil here and 7 mil there for awhile but with all the changes I'm fairly certain my costs are higher than what I'm bringing in. Unless I have a steady inflow of creds, I won't be crafting (which I was hoping to get more into after this release). I'll buy the arguments that it's too early to judge the update, despite the fact that costs have all gone up and I'm definitely earning fewer credits at the same time; it's a painful combination. However, I don't think lecturing anyone (as several people have, I'm not singling you out) on how "easy" it is to get credits is helpful... especially when we haven't really had a chance to fairly evaluate all the 6.0 changes yet. Some methods of earning creds are gone... I'm sure others will pop up though and make "it's easy" more valid than it is currently. Sure, people can run heroics... but they just got harder across the board too which might hinder solo players that don't have the best gear or the 4+ mil creds needed to get companions to influence 50. Everything is easy to say if you've been playing for a while and have all the little bonuses which add up. All that said, I don't think I'll be able to fairly evaluate current difficulty level or credit flow until I've gotten a few toons to 75. At the moment, it's just a lot thrown at us at once so I understand why people would complain.

Agreed. Everything feels too grind-y now. Not my thing. To each their own, but I'll let my sub expire (wish that wouldn't take a few months). I liked it better when I did NOT have to turn my comp onto heal and take forever clearing mobs and bosses. That's just no fun for me. Challenging bosses that require learning mechanics.. that's the good kind of difficult. Whacking at an NPC all day while I just stand there, that's lame. I'll never understand why anyone wants that sort of "difficulty."

I just invited someone to my Rishi SH last night.. it's almost definitely a bug of some sort unless something changed today with 6.0. Perhaps you tried inviting someone that was in a phase? Has this happened more than once? Or were you the invitee? Maybe they had you on the banned list for some reason?

Update: I can't get into SS either... it's giving me the update message where you can start a new class but can't log into established characters. So it looks like SS and SF are both down, at least for me, SS just allows you to go one step further before hitting the wall. *edit* restarting app (after crash) fixed SS problem I was having, but SF still down. Not sure if useful info for Eric and team so just leaving this here.

Same. Can get into SS no problem but SF is offline for me. I was just on it thirty minutes ago... *edit* I can't get into SS either... I can at least get to the screen with all my toons, but it's not actually connecting. I'm getting the "start a new toon while updates download" -ish message.

So, obviously a continuation of the other thread in which the nerfing is admitted to by the development team... what can we still do to make the best of a bad situation if we want to level some toons this week? One observation that I had today during my over six hours of bug killing is that the eXP is all over the place. The numbers seemed rather frustrating until I hit the mid 30s where it picked up for a bit before tanking again before I hit 50 only to pick up again between 65 and 70. I sorta wish I kept a spreadsheet just to show how up and down leveling was... there was zero consistency. For almost all of my time in group, we maintained close to a full ops group of 24 so I can't say with any confidence that group size matters when I saw so much fluctuation with a near constant group size... for no reason apparent to any of us. Some have suggested in the previous thread that smaller groups were having better results, but such observations could easily be based on shifts in group size being conflated with random changes for some not accounted for variable. So what is your experience? Can anyone confirm that smaller groups are beneficial for the entire leveling process from say level 30 to 70? Is it simply a matter of the large group xp bonus no longer existing, possibly even being a sort of debuff? When the good numbers were coming in, it seemed independent of any one player's given level as the entire group would see a benefit; so my own observation of things picking up around 35 could very well have been random chance. It just didn't feel like the number of members in the ops group was what was shifting in that moment either as that was fairly constant throughout. Nor did it seem to matter much if there were any level 70s in the group... hard to pinpoint any cause really, which is why I'm wondering if anyone else might have noticed anything worth mentioning? Around the time I left, the group went down to 16 on purpose with the presumption that it would work better. Did it? Any one there after I left able to weigh in on whether smaller group size was advantageous (and remained advantageous throughout)? Also not mentioned in the other thread was the level 28 bug where xp would stop altogether until you logged out. I wander if such bugs likely tied to level-correction were additionally hurting the entire ops group, and if the random fluctuations were actually due to people coming and going from the group. Anyway, just fishing for any personal anecdotes that might prove fruitful.

Bragging rights? Maybe I'm missing something since I don't bother with ranked pvp myself, but wouldn't the entire point of ranking be the self satisfaction of you know, ranking well? Not saying that there shouldn't be appropriate rewards for any form of game play but your solution seems to be exclusive control of an item that is within harmony of your preferred playing style. If that's not your solution, then what is a compromise approach that benefits more than just you? tl;dr below... but I wanted to throw out some food for thought based on my personal experience. In summary, while I agree with you that steps should be taken to stem abuse by a minority of players... they are the minority. Every choice bioware makes is going to hurt some segment of the user base, so be careful not to generalize them for the sake of a convenient argument full of assumptions. I believe mechanisms do exist to prevent abuse as described in my rant below. I find your premise in the first post a bit extreme... just because someone CAN have 24 toons doesn't mean that everyone does. Just because someone CAN have each of those toons in a large planet conquest guild, doesn't mean that they do. Just because a guild can and often does invade a large yield planet, doesn't mean that the guild will for any given week (or even most weeks, for that matter). You are taking everything to the extreme to make a point, but the extreme only applies to a handful of users and by no means the average. I'd be interested to see the numbers on that, but those numbers are not something either one of us have to draw up any sort of conclusion from... it's pure speculation. If I'm wrong on that point, then please, show me some numbers to consider. There's also another aspect that you are failing to consider altogether, that items needed for a 240 level mod should be more widely available. 2mil for a mat x2 for an augment makes it very rare... but is that rarity even desired, especially as we approach a new level tier in the fall and presumably even higher weapons class? I suspect, but it's pure speculation, that the demand for 240 augments will drop anyway and the selling price of the transubs is going to bottom out in a few months when new stuff is out. What you are perceiving as some grand game-changing move, I'm seeing as one of many moves in flux... this is a transition phase. In the end, your gripe may be moot; we'll see in a few months with the update. Also, I believe there is something that already controls the number of transubs awarded for large yield planets... I don't think anyone is getting 4 x 24 of them in a week. Last week I had twelve toons complete conquest (a record high for me, for what you call an easy task, and I do have all of my strongholds for that bonus without which conquest would be a real pain). Of those twelve, two were in a large yield planet guild that was invading a small planet, four were small yield working for flagship encryption... so for half of MY toons, the item in question wasn't even an option last week. Of the remaining six, only two actually received the large chest for a combined total of four transubs between them (and one each for the remaining toons with a small crate)... The amount in a large chest fluctuates between 2 and 4 and I assume that is dependent on some roll that we don't see. It would appear that my small planet conquering toons were probably counted against me in this roll... so what I'm trying to say is that the evidence suggests that mechanisms to prevent abuse by someone wanting to game the system twenty-four times likely already exist... possibly even hurting those of us not taking advantage of what we could optimally do if we wanted to focus 100% of our energy to that end; i.e. by farming for flagship mats for my guild, I actually lost out not once but twice on the transub reward b/c that choice also likely hurt my roll for the toons that did a large conquest on the same server. My choice to be in such a guild, but still... I don't know, what you are calling easy sounds like someone grinding for hours a day to that end. You'll have that on any game but they are the minority. Sorry for the wordiness, but trying to throw some things out there to discuss without just accusing you of sour grapes. What percentage of the user base do you think should have the mats to craft with and/or the resulting augments? At what cost? Is this about having an item to profit from or is it a concern regarding the level of armor in the game? What alternative awards could encourage more ranked pvp play? Honestly, one of the things that keeps me away is that I don't feel like my own gear is sufficient but perhaps I don't understand the buffs w/in game and it's an unfounded fear on my part. Personally, I'd love to have contests of pure skill removed from gear altogether, but if that were an option, I suspect players wouldn't care about having the best available armor in the first place. Or is it a matter of status and pure supply/demand economics?