Does this GS objective actually complete? It didn't for me the two times i tried it in GS1 (yet more wasted hours) and pretty sure that CS said it was a known bug yet to be fixed.

YOU own your identity in REAL life. YOU live your evolving experience in REAL life. THAT is what matters. Coming to a 10 year old game with hundreds of scripted interactions and many dependencies based on a presumed IMAGINARY identity and demanding that it be re-wired so you can play out the very specific scenario of transitioning the gender of your character during their story arc shows a level of conceited entitlement and self-involvement that betrays an unhealthy state of mind. It puts you in the class of people who want to literally turn back time in order to re-live their history with a different set of determinants and constraints of their own current choosing. If you want to play out that scenario then either seek a game designed at launch to enable such a storyline with all the correct fluid personal pronouns and interactions pre-empted OR, here's a thing, use your imagination to RP the scenario here in SWTOR subject to the constraints of the game structure as analogues to the real world difficulties of gaining acknowledgement and acceptance where you are a small minority pitted against numerous vested ideologies that may be sociologically anachronistic in their inhumanity, intolerance and otherwise suppressive nature. The appearance of characters has already been freed up to enable some gender fluidity and you can pay to rename your characters. You can also create two characters in parallel to play out the duality of living with a discontiguous physicality and psychology before uniting the ongoing play within the single entity/identity you choose to advance your imaginary life with. Role playing within a settled paradigm means YOU need to bring some acceptance to the situation to build an experience from the limited interactions it provides, in order to progress a storyline that deals with a future not obsesses about a past. If you must have fluid, adaptive real-time interaction then no scripted game is going to suit you. You need to find a (probably) human-run role playing campaign that welcomes and accommodates all genders and sexualities. You can do that in SWTOR just not within the confines of its commercially viable, pre-scripted entity of it's past.

Yet another extraordinarily tone-deaf statement that reveals where the true priorities lie, even if the silent workers would rather be working to make good on the issues that would best serve the current players and subscribers funding this spiralling property. Oh for a whistleblower with the strength of conviction to match the level of contempt being demonstrated. Where is our Jedi to match the Sith in control? Here''s a suggestion for a truly respectable, honourable and groundbreaking approach to customer outreach - an online cantina to tell us in detail about all the fixes you are attending to, the challenges in progressing them and the candour to confirm all the fixes you won't be delivering and the reasons for that. The game economy may be drowning in credits but there is a moral bankruptcy that seems to be plunging to a nadir not yet in sight. Having reached GS L100 and felt hollow at the achievement it has finally dawned on me that 7.x has killed any desire to continue and complete the rep chase for the Syndicate or even do the bugged new content. I am now fully cognisant of how I really am just wasting time in this game universe. I begin my recovery from this bout of junkiedom today... unsub x2 inbound.

Unnecessary insults aside (how old are you OP?) and your complete lack of outline of why this format doesn't work for you and indeed what you'd like to see, the technology to create CGI-intense, persistent, maleable online worlds where subscribers produce shareable assets and storylines is only just arriving at a consumer level. In the next year or so we should see some very promising ideas surfacing from smaller startups and modder communities as they get to grips with these. The big dev houses are going to really struggle because crowd-sourcing/open source creation by players for players is going to escalate, they will then participate in organically created universes to publish their own branded content. A smart play would be to begin hosting dev environments and offer hosting to dev communities using any useful hardware as they shutter games they can't maintain and sell their "expertise" <snort> at managing the availability of these services. Start building out optimised server farms with eco-credentials to create the sandpits that the communities will develop in.

On the upside for BW, the less people present the less complaints made (assuming those who remain don't increase their rate of complaint to more than compensate,,,) Masterfully devious community management, guess JK loves to play Sith.

Thanks for sharing your lived experience. As a veteran from launch the only time levelling was anything other than easy was if you actively chose to use under-levelled gear for the planets you were on, avoided all XP boosts, never got into rested state, you equipped your companions poorly too and disabled some/all of their utility i.e. a long time ago. Toxic players can be on at any time and from anywhere, no particular nationality, no particular genuine politics, just pure unadulterated wastes of DNA. There are the children who clamour for spacebar when a newbie is taking their time but I tend to slow my response rate the more they whine. The only vote-kicks I'll support are d/cs who seem unable to return or whiny spacebar mashers. Most of the PUGs I'm forced into for conquest and GS achievement are populated with obliging people. Running with guildies you're part of a tribe so at least for appearances sake everyone mostly tries to get along, but I've had whiny spacebar merchants and ADHD incompetents who refuse to grind out an objective in guild groups too. The worst for me are GSF PUG players, the elitist "Aces" who say nothing, share nothing yet whine about AFKers and people who don't know tactics which they refuse to elaborate on. Just today put out a call on Alderaan for others to join the bashing of champions and whilst I got a couple of enquiries most remained silent, so it's less toxicity and more apathy because of the BW's choices. But then when I reached the Imp base and started soloing, a couple of randoms turned up and helped complete the 25 kills even though the last 9 were just for me. The kindness of strangers.

Sorry Chris, claiming that a displayed value is evidence that the mechanics that are determined by it are working properly is NOT a valid universal test UNLESS you can assure/evidence to us that ALL calculations involving Presence have been checked and derive their determining value from the same single source of truth as the character sheet AND none of those calculations perform odd refactoring that isn't justifiably specific to the calculations' uses and that those conditions were known to users. IF any tester came to me and claimed that a bug had been fixed because they changed how it was displayed I'd want proof that all dependent calculations were correctly affected, not just seem to be affected immeasurably in the right direction.

The only thing requiring stupid amounts of money to be spent is the ridiculous demands by some players, with warped senses of achievement or genuinely bad intent, for the price of items. There is no game mechanic requiring the acquisition of such huge sums of money as an objective for all players. Sure there're the Stronghold expansion costs, some Endgame pieces of equipment and account and character unlocks, all of whose (meagre) inflated costs were feeble attempts to soak up credits from the otherwise bottomless influx of "corrupt" credits into the game. The reason so much money is flowing in the game is precisely because huge amounts can be transacted via GTN and inter-character trade between players. So first and foremost you need to constrict that flow. Look at all the items sold by vendors or bought back by them as "trash", mostly valued at mere hundreds or thousands of credits, they don't back up truckloads of credits to compensate you when you vendor the junk you acquire from trashing increasingly more powerful mobs at higher levels. The in-game economy amongst NPCs is a modest and reasonable one. - So, firstly, cap all transaction amounts between player accounts to 1 million credits (MCr), there's nothing in the game that necessitates more than this for "progression". That's toon-to-toon by gifting or in exchange either "face-to-face" or by mail or GTN (or whatever else). - Cap all toon "wallets" at say 10 MCr, Legacy and Guild banks at 1 billion (BCr). Move all bar 5 MCr of each toon and bank balances over 1 BCr into escrow, which is then free to withdraw from but cannot be added to. So once you fill up your wallets you cannot accept any more credits. Additional toon slots can be (temporarily) bought for 100 MCr up to current cap of toons per account. - Make all CM items BoP or BoL, i.e. non-tradeable between players. So now the only "unreasonable" economy is driven by craftable or dropped items. - Reduce (or increase) the cost of each existing credit sink to what's now reasonably attainable by all players and depending on how necessary or luxury they are. - Introduce some time-limited buy-back vendors who will exchange credits for CC at say 10 MCr to 1 CC (or higher if the community of veterans and bad actors is so unreasonably wealthy). These vendors could be re-deployed if the economy gets overblown again at whatever exchange rate is needed. - If it isn't already then make credits an in-game "cryptocurrency" so chain of custody is maintained and now bad actors (and their customers) have nowhere to hide. - Revise material costs and requirements for current end-game craftables to make them more reasonable in the revised economy. - Increase the tempo of release of new items in CM (BoP or BoL) and as BoE drops across all levels and play areas, but at suitable drop rates to reward reasonable graft for luck or grind of combinations of untradeable mission materials and currencies. Items should include moddable armour, accessory and weapon skins. - Start adding new exploration and treasure hunts and Heroic missions in existing play areas with some of these new items as rewards. - Add more craftable item and modification schematics (up to Endgame stat levels) to be dropped and found. - There are no doubt other additions to generate (persisting) player interest beyond just new zones and Operations. E.g. allow raiding of Guild properties either as PvP or PvE (where defenders in the latter are automated member toons). Loot would be random draws from equipped items and specific trophies for destroyed assets (yes that means destructible decos and infrastructure). Defenders would reap the random loot from defeated attackers. Guilds would then have to re-build damaged properties. Attackers and defenders would earn "Siege" XP (at different rates for victory or defeat) that could be traded for ship encryptions, stronghold reinforcement bonuses, destructible defending decos, siege attack bonuses and, maybe, even destructible multiple-toon crewed siege mounts. Such epic confrontations could be automatically streamed to various platforms and even monetised by rewarding participating players with CC or real-world loot and cash. People who genuinely feel the acquisition of wealth is the be all and end all of the game and would quit because of these limits aren't of the mind to keep the game healthy. We're better off without them. People who play the game for the love of the IP and experience they can generate within the game world are who are needed and should be nurtured. Note: Any commercialisation of the above ideas will require the appropriate negotiated compensation for licensing.

Anyone else see the irony in giving out 10 of the same dyes, presumably for your alts since they're BoL and yet all the other decisions to fulfil "The Vision"...? Urea in solution being extracted?

Dear Jackie, I've just read the announcement again and ask for an unambigous clarification: Will the rewards we have managed to claim between 7.0.1 and 7.0.1a be retained by our characters and the "re-claimed" ones be additional rewards (regardless of track or if they are in-game items or Cartel Coins) OR will you be trying to remove all the claimed ones and ONLY the re-claimed ones will be granted to our characters? It seems that doing the latter will be problematic as the non-award of items and Cartel Coins has been inconsistent across time for individuals and across players. Please clarify ASAP because if you are planning on doing the latter you could be heading for even more player upset and sub cancellations.

Sorry, to clarify, do you mean that smuggler specific armour is not equipping to your character when you use a loadout to return to a smuggler Combat Style from a Commando one? Or do you mean you're trying to use smuggler only armour whilst using Commando a Combat Style?

The POINT is that: 1) The shortfall has already been officially noted and is trivially corrected, even if BW haven't done so. There is no need to spend any remotely serious dev time on this. A query against the player Db will identify all toons with Fen as a companion and automatically mail them all a 5k token for the sake of the few q-q'ers. 2) If you're of a personality type that is going to stamp and hold your breath because you're 5k short on an objective that doesn't have to be addressed until the end of the season, i.e. the time frame allotted by BW to finish the subscriber track then your issues with 5k are the least of your real world problems. 3) We're what, some 40 days into the season which if you'd sent Fen on just one crew mission a day on even a moderately levelled crew skill you'd be (almost) done with the 5k shortfall. If you were sending him on 280 pt missions then you'd have banked at least 11200 pts, so you'd actually be ahead of the curve (if you're relying on not paying extra real money or GS tokens to accelerate your completion), presuming you weren't so anxious to get him to 50 that you'd use a compendium anyway, in which case... So whilst this (elementary) miscalculation may irritate for the tiny attributable value undelivered against the cost of your sub, it is actually an error in your favour as most any player effort to make up for it (unjust as that might feel) will benefit your character(s) beyond what the subscriber track was going to give you. Also the recently stated intention and fix in 7.0.1a for the much larger GS reward issues post 7.0.1 mean that the missing 5k will be more than accounted for for most players bothering with the GS sub track path to 100. The only players genuinely affected by this will be players starting late on the GS sub track, post 7.0.1a, who aren't going to be spending CC to unlock and refuse to: 1) Use crew skill missions to make up for everything they've missed since season start. 2) Buy a compendium. A genuinely understandable "financial" decision on CC or CR terms.

Thank you finally for coming forth and I am glad you've taken an approach that matches what was suggested. Please confirm that this same approach will be announced immediately should any similar incident occur this season or any subsequent season/event where progressive rewards are issued. This kind of incident management immediately buys you (relatively) unharassed time to investigate and formulate a fix and it builds player confidence that they can just get on with playing (whatever else isn't unplayably broken). Players should still be encouraged to raise tickets in case other error triggers are encountered which aren't (yet) figured into the patch. BTW since you've confirmed you have at least some visible audit of player progress you can now publish a number of standard responses (SOPs) to incident types to reassure players of how some issues will be managed in future. Publishing how you plan to respond to issues can build customer confidence in the service you're delivering. We can give you feedback on the approaches and in your adaptation to feedback you might build further confidence and trust.

As Toraak is trying to tell you, you fail to understand the reason for the credit cap. Its existence is a necessary counter-inflationary measure as well as an incentive to sub.

Agree some kind of independent step-wise gameplay selector switch in Preferences that modifies the performance of companions may be a good way to give choice back to players. Story - 100% (6.x) influence based performance** Vet - 66% of said perf, or 100% 7.0 performance whichever is worse. Hard - 33% of said perf. or 66% 7.0 performance whichever is worse. Nim - Companion tells you they're too busy to help, go run solo. ** This performance modifier would have to be tested BEFORE finalising implementation to see if it should apply to Alacrity as timing of actions is perhaps more critical to balance than the amount of dmg/heal delivered. It should NOT apply to aggro. The performance would advance raw per the levels as already written and likewise for L76-80 and beyond. (This would account for any non-linear accumulation of companion ability scores that has happened over the various release evolutions).

Another analogy came to mind: Being in the casino and winning a hand at the table, landing the winning ball on the wheel, throwing a winning roll at craps or getting a winning line on the slots and then the dealer/croupier/machine shouts "Rule change! No win!" and takes your money. Can you image the real carnage if that happened in Nevada?

Whilst there is indeed plenty of time remaining in the Season to get to level 100 the point for subscribers is that being delayed deliberately (and active ignoring of community pleas for information and action makes it deliberate) means having to subscribe for longer than they might want to. So the delays are costing us money, for some of us that matters, the (un)intended fraudulent service notwithstanding.

19 hours on, no response from the Community Manager, not the devs who should rightly be heads down grafting on fault finding and fixing, THE Community Manager! Anyone know if Jackie is also coding fixes or fault-finding the reported bugs, that's pretty much the only excuse for her absence other than medical/family emergency reasons (which I hope she isn't suffering from).

Dear Jackie, To avoid any further (paying) customer frustration, aggravation, animosity and to try to mitigate further sub cancellations I VERY strongly suggest you get your bosses to acknowledge and agree the following: 1/ Galactic Seasons progression is unavoidable whilst players play as they want whilst the GS problem persists. 2/ Rewards are not being reliably granted to accounts as players progress. 3/ Get one of your devs to create a tool that will parse the player account database, check for each account that has logged in and started scoring GS pts this week, note their opening GS score for this week, award everyone the maximum pt progression for the week 3x12 + 4x8 + 7x2 = 82, tot up all the rewards each account would be entitled to (if they're on sub or free tracks) and send all of that to the mailbox of the highest level toon they logged into this week. Add the total Cartel Coins due to each account's balance. 4/ Advise all players to just play whatever they like this week (yes, that may really stick in your management's craw but suck it up). It doesn't matter if players manage to claim some of the rewards whilst you try to fix the problem, write that off additionally to good will. 5/ IF the GS problem is not fixed for next week then simply do this same remedial exercise again until it is fixed.

Are the people here moaning about 5000 influence points not using any crew skills on their toons? Spend a few creds and upskill from 0 Anyone with half decent crew skills will be earning a profit from sending him on missions for those 5000 pts. With the right choices and a little luck he could earn 20+ MCr.

How is Crit 1222 on Guild Ship (on L80 Shield Spec carry a few crit items) scaled to 124 on CZ-198 @ L56 appropriate? I was dealing noticeably lower damage i,e, TTK was up on trash mobs throughout compared to just before 7.0.1 dropped. And whilst it's great you've made the Details pop-up more persistent where's the eXit button for it? Click away no longer works so you have to Esc out of the entire Character Window ! Have any of your involved devs actually done a fundamentals certification in UI design? If your people are too punch drunk and exhausted from crunching since we don't know when then please hire some new devs to do the lifting and just prop the living dead ones up next to them to advise.

IF the "only" missing items are from the Subscriber track and every account has a record of the GS achievements completed then they can count back the points scored from your latest total and see which levels you unlocked (same if you paid CC to unlock) and thus have a proper reckoning on the rewards to award. IF they happen to duplicate I think they should do so as a goodwill gesture given the complete CF this has been so far.

Put your pants back on and put away that hammer and nail.

Appealing to casuals doesn't have to mean dumber content. Casuals and ageing (more responsible i.e. time poor) old-skool players will still love challenging content i.e. tricky rather than laborious. Problem we have is that game designers seem to think that forcing us to spend hours getting through an Op is what counts as challenging, and the only way they can guarantee that is by making the monsters hard to kill because they have so many hit points and invulnerabilities. They could try: More puzzles and clearances, with teams split up. A campaign of FPs/Group content with repercussions carrying forward from decisions made or content skipped. That would allow teams to progress through a sequence of steps that might only need less than an hr per instance. The end of the campaign resulting in a particular cache of rewards being unlocked depending on what was skipped. You could say the same legacies would need to take part but allow different toons in each instance. "End-game" doesn't have to be many people spending hours together without interruption, this does not respect players' changing lifestyles and short term commitments.

Indeed, and how much fun is that, when perhaps you only have an hour of game time a sitting and only a handful of sittings a week? Just after GS1 started I created a new account/legacy and I've been playing that in parallel to my main. I've just been playing it for the story experiences and then when the toons hit 75 I did a little FP running to start collecting frags and get the end-game armours. With time limitations I haven't had the time to endlessly "Groundhog" the millions you have explained are possible and have only acquired 4 pieces of one set through frags and the limited cash I've gotten from drops whilst doing GS POs and conquest contributions. So whilst those who can dedicate hours to the game daily/weekly can perhaps indulge the monotony/repetition you describe, along with all the other time-sinks, I'm thinking of the casuals that only have a few hours to indulge per week. The same casuals that might be being targetted with the simplified combat proposed for 7.0 At last we're on the same side of the argument with the ludicrous state of the "economy". But the absurdity has been accelerating, less than a year ago some "desirable" CM armours were going for sub 10 MCr, 1 hr of Spammering, now they're being sold for 10s of MCr. Perhaps a cynic would say that BW proxies are "breaking" the GTN to force people to spend CC in CM or maybe the uber rich players are exploiting the GTN. Neither is good for the "average" player, nor is any other real reason for the inflation. Hang on. Ops attract interest because of the challenge and rewards they offer be they cosmetics or QoL or more powerful gear that makes it easier to do that Op. Getting into them can't be gated on having what's in them, that's why the necessary gear is available from "easier" content and vendors. That logic has always been the case before SWTOR 1.0. We may be debating different points here, you're talking about mechanics and tactics which are always a necessary learning curve for any game that wants to be genuinely challenging. That's why both of us would be coming to a game and why either of us might leave in frustration if they proved unmanageable for us. I'm saying that newbies shouldn't be able to rock up to any "hard" content and be able to overcome it with the same ease as those veterans who've grafted for the powerful/rare items won in previous runs of the ultimate content. And that those trophies should not be rendered less than they were when the latest content is added to the game. Sadly, because of the ability rework they are doing more than just making the future challenges more challenging than the current best working gear can handle, they are effectively rendering them less capable against all the content they previously dominated. The statements about current gear not working at level 80 aren't logical, because the moment 7.0 drops all current set bonuses will be broken by the ability rework that 7.0 brings. So you can't use any of the "special" attributes against any level of content, scaled or not.