Ok, this is likely not related to 7.0 changes, but something I just encountered: In chapter 1 of KOTFE, where you get imprisoned and then follow Arcann along on the walkway towards the next cutscene with the Imploder, I mean Emporer, if Heroic Moment was still active while the previous cutscene started, it is active on the walkway, still. Minor glitch and the actions cannot be triggered. Ctrl+U twice brings the action bar back, so it stays active. Also waited a while, and it doesn't go away on its own (i.e. timeout stopped/bugged). Going through the cutscene following and ending up in the dream sequence getting back control the bar is gone then, though.

You know, BioWare decided it would be a grand idea to railroad everyone and their cat through MM FPs and other such stuff just for the sake of it -- "better gear for harder content" blabla -- and certain missions adding these to get points for some garbage I don't even know why they lock it behind "grind" in the first place. And now you show up and want to raise the bar even further, as if that will change anything. In fact, it just makes things even worse if you go that route. Aside of that, and you said it yourself, VM FP can only prepare you so far for MM FP, which in return means you must do MM FP to learn it, and you have to start somewhere. As someone else noted already, even VM FPs are messy. I will not write a wall of text here going into details of human psychology and sociology how to resolve all that, because it is possible to actually make a team out of players who seem to move around in Brownian motion initially. If you feel like there are too many players now rushing MM FPs without the actual will to do them properly, then maybe punch BioWare square into the face and tell them to remove (a) this neuro-whatever mission and (b) rethink this entire "how to get gear" business. That is the only solution, aside of running MM FPs solely with people you know. Requesting a bandaid for a wound which is continously prodded vs. stopping the prodding. What do you think is the better solution for things to heal?

That is the thing with the dyes, right? Note that you get not just 1 dye, but like 10 or so, plus something else.

They do update the list of known bugs, and it grows and grows ... Quite a lot of these bugs you can see very fast yourself without doing much. That is the type of bug which should be catched by any developer as part of development, before it even hits testers of any kind.

Yeah, that should be static and only switch if there is any movement / distance change between object and camera. Feels like it cannot decide on what quality setting to use and constantly switches (watching your video). I did a short test on the sith ship myself and was not able to trigger anything like that. Ok, I haven't changed the quality settings, maybe should do that. Yes. It is more about being able to potentially reproduce the problem or see if it matches any known driver bug. GPU drivers, while the quality over time increased, are seriously complex things plus by now overloaded with all kinds of special case handling to optimize things. That means chances are good to stumble into all kinds of weird issues from that side. Game engines carry extra code to work around GPU related issues, which is a sad but uinfortunately necessary thing. I played this for a while on a GTX780 in high/custom settings until the card yielded to it, so from that point of view it should be perfectly fine to run SWTOR without a hitch (and, as you've noted, did until 7.0 hit).

Are the reqs too high? Note that there is a bug at least in FPs and such where you have to reload your companion to be able to actually extract stuff. Seen it randomly in other places, too. That existed before 7.0 already and is still an issue.

Check this thread. Might be a more general issue with companions. Also, if shopping on CM, make sure you cannot obtain the stuff anywhere else in the game. Is too late for Treek now, but there are a couple more such ripoffs to find there. (Check first little bot you stumble into when entering Cartel section on fleet ...)

I'd wager the CZ-198 weekly missing is as intentional as this other stuff intentionally missing, like tons of FPs etc.

The level scaling seems to be bugged. Having 1500 power on Dromund Kaas is probably not what was intended. Turns out that augments somehow are calculated differently into the level scaling now, as if they are added after the scaling. That may not be entirely correct, but something is fishy with them in terms of level scaling. The lower the level goes, the more impact this has, and it also affects other stats, but to a lesser degree. Imagine a tank with almost 7k HP, 1500 power, higher shield+absorb than normal and you get a walking nightmare which melts gold mobs in few hits.

A culling of this action salad was more than necessary, and quite a few players agree on this fact. But yes, there are a number of other places where this simplifcation shows. There are complex MMOs out there, and SWTOR is already very much at the other end of the complexity scale really, i.e. there is not much room for more simplification without breaking the entire game to pieces.

Hahaha, I can actually see where this comes from, i.e. it shows how this this implemented. Imagine some template text and the decision seems to be done according to your side (republic in this case). However, that must be changed to your active class now (operative / imperial). What a mess. But I guess waltzing through the 6.x guides may help figuring this out, if the tactical existed there already and is mentioned in the guide(s).

That is actually designed behavior, depending on view distance (as in camera location vs. object) to either use higher or lower res textures, models, etc. You could / can easily see it when zooming the camera with your own toon. This existed before 7.0 already, but I have the feeling that they messed with this a bit in more subtle ways. From a developer's point of view your information is ... vague ... and aside of saying "yeah, ok, bad" there is not much which can be done about it until more contextual information is available. That means things like your computers setup (GPU, driver version, maybe any more specifics if needed), and if you know a way to more or less reliably trigger it (what do you do to get there) are really helpful to potentially understanding the root of the problem and eventually fixing it one way or another. Also consider that other software in the system might trigger problems, especially AV software is known to cause havoc randomly. Maybe something to look into / experiment with, to exclude these possibilites.

Maybe, instead of creating another thread, I will add a couple more things here I stumbled over so far: Everything got smaller. This starts with the character selection screen and continues to the overall UI scaling, which seems to have changed. Reading a couple pixel high chat text on a 20" 4:3 screen where you sit a little bit further away is stupid, not to talk about all kinds of other messages, texts, icons, etc. where you need to "aim" more carefully now. There is UI scaling, but this overly large new combine-everything-in-one-window puts a limit on that. It was ok before, with some exceptions because of the 4:3 ratio.To double down on that flair + legacy title selection: Not only is it too small now for a good few titles and such, it is also half-transparent to the point that the "background" of the selection list is so garbled that the actual text entries are not really easy to read, i.e. reduce the transparency of the drop down lists. This is an UI not "oh look at this cool half-transparent drop down list!".Why has the exit button to FPs/OPs/instances been reduced to this very small icon? I think it was already not easy to find in the first place (if you don't know about it), and now it is even less visible.I have to recheck in how I can reproduce the problem, but I had a currency list where scrolling triggered some weird behavior, i.e. the list seemed to scroll but eventually swapped to a different view then and was missing some entries. That is not the FOP bug, the entries as such were properly displayed.The have-it-all window doesn't allow "restacking", i.e. cannot be acitvated to be in the foreground, for example.UI scaling makes the inventory (and a few other things) look even more horrible. I have to recheck on cargo things, because there are rulers in there and they looked a bit weirdly aligned, too.While I understand the idea of "simplification", don't punish the players who want to get more information. Having to check on the actual stat numbers in a sub-window is complete and utter garbage. There is enough space on the left to switch between this "overview" and hard(er) stats for all these who are more interested in that.The selected abilities/passives in the selection list/tree should be highlighted better. The visual difference to the non-highlighted ones is just too small. I will add more stuff over time here.

This dampens the effect a bit. It is the boxes, the spacing between them, and the solid background which create the uneasiness. The first thing I noted when logging in was "why is everything so small now?!" and that started with the character selection screen already. Now make a guess what happens to the inventory if you use UI scaling > 1. The UI has so many gotchas, I'm hard-pressed to stay diplomatic in my choice of words.

Ich weiß, rein aus Interesse, aber aus einem anderen Blickwinkel ist das letztendlich egal, weil man ohne visuelle Hilfen beim Aufschreiben der Zahl allein beim Zählen der Stellen schonmal durcheinander kommen kann. SWTOR gehört zu der großen Gruppe an MMOs, in denen man endlos viel Geld erzeugen kann. Das steckt quasi im Spieldesign drin, ist auch ok so. Da gibt es dann effektiv 2 Stellschrauben: Einmal den Zufluß an Geld (was man momentan mit 7.0 versucht, mehr unter Kontrolle zu bekommen) und die verschiedenen Grenzen für die maximale Menge. Das betrifft einerseits das horten von Werten, aber eben auch die Menge an Geld, die sicher in einer Handelsaktion (Geld gegen Ware) transferiert werden darf. Ich sehe da ein "Leets R Us" (<3), d.h. das Thema Inflation dürfte Dir auch schon in einem anderen Kontext über den Weg gelaufen sein. Die haben etwas kleinere Maximalgrenzen, aber es gibt eben auch Wege drumherum, und trotz diverser richtig großer Geldsenken, die man da eingeführt hat, hat sich die Situation in den Jahren nicht verbessert. Da gab es auch einen "classic"-Server, wo man den Effekt des ständigen Geldzuwachses wunderbar beobachten konnte, d.h. was mal nur 300k gekostet hat, war dann bald 1mio wert usw. Deswegen ist ein sinnvolles Zusammenspiel zwischen Geldzuwachs als auch diesen Grenzen wichtig, und das hat man in SWTOR massiv verpatzt. Wöllte man das Problem wirklich lösen, wird man um die Brechstange nicht herumkommen, und ich vermute mal, daß das ein zu heißes Eisen ist, zumal, wie von anderen hier schon hingewiesen wurde, die Inflation in Teilen sogar positiv fürs Geschäft ist, also das von BioWare/EA.

If you think this as a city map of blocks, you will notice that your brain adds some "off" coloring with the crossroads. That is a grid illusion effect and in that scale (many such boxes etc.) causes problems because the perceived image is not "static" (brain is constantly trying to figure this out and failing at it). Which means you cannot "rest" while looking it at. The old inventory didn't have this problem, it is perceived as a static background, even has some grouping in it (which was visually very helpful when sorting stuff). The overall "high contrast" UI design is a fad which luckily died as fast as it popped up, but it seems not all have catched up accordingly. It does help a subset of visually impaired people, which is why you have a "high contrast" option here and there, including Windows itself.

Haha, but I don't think so. In the end we have no clue and can only make guesses, but fiascos like this usually have way more trivial reasons in the very end. One is business suits being involved too deep, putting up needless pressure, greenlighting stuff too late for the work needed or not assigning enough people for all the work needed. This continues on with technical and design decisions by people who either lack the experience or really think they are on the right road and no talking to will change that until they hit the inevitable roadblock everyone was telling them about. And last in line are actual inexperienced developers / creators. I haven't worked in the gaming industry really, but from other fields I can tell you that while the last one does exist and may have an impact, it is often / almost always catched by other more experienced team members early enough to not become an issue. However, all the other things always cause trouble one way or another, and I've seen various combinations of that many times over. In rare cases you can put up additional work to make things right while to the outside it still looks like the stuff they wanted, but usually this is double work for same pay. Now that this fiasco has been unleashed the thing we can truly hope for is (a) the persons really responsible for this get a good and long verbal beatdown for it and (b) the people actually making things happen have the time needed to fix all the entries from the "known issues" list so we don't need to treat the game like a minefield ("step carefully!") while playing it. And then we are in a state where we can start talking about the fallout from all the design changes and consequences, because it seems like that topic will keep the people busy for a bit longer ...

We are talking about a *core* design of SWTOR here, namely binding actions and class/spec together. Which means if, for example, you want to have force pull+push on all force users, you have to provide these actions for all 4 classes. Maybe lets not stop there and go further? Eventually you will see that classes/specs sharing so many things the entire design becomes obsolete. Now, yes, there are other game systems out there which offer you many more degrees of freedom; imagine a blaster using force user who controls the flights of the bullets similar to something already. But you will need to completely redesign SWTOR from scratch for that, and this game was never meant to be overly complex to begin with. That is one of the sacrifices on the altar of simplicity. It also has nothing to do with being lazy, because you suffer in other ways in return in terms of design, i.e. it doesn't come for free.

Well, that is bad design at least because there is no feedback to the user of whatever problem the software has run into. There is a lot of software out there which is riddled with similar problems because error handling is an afterthought instead of integral part of the design. The juicy detail about this is the fact that the devs now also have to do guesses what could be wrong instead of getting more detailed error reports from users ... In any case, it worked for me today normally (2x) after I decided it is not worth the time waiting last evening. Darth Malgus as default server, non-steam version.

You know what is truly flawed? Being able to stuff like 100b into your legacy cargo. If you could store only 100m and carry only 100m etc. where would the prices be? Money caps are the only way to deal with an open economy where money will endlessly be generated. The influx just decides how fast you can run towards the caps, but the caps decide how far things can go. It is kind of funny that MMO game designers fall flat on their nose time and again with this 101 MMO game design problem. Even funnier is, that there were MMOs out there 20 years ago already who fully understood the underlying issue and consequently never had any true inflation. Which means regardless what process created the influx of money, it is in the system and it will only get more, so everything points continously upwards until the caps are reached. Obviously the GTN one has been hit already for a number of items, but others have more room upwards. Also, the least affected are the farmers; it is the normal players who will feel the impact the most, aside of new players.

SWTOR is one of the more modern MMOs, and as such railroads you in terms of weapon selection, available actions etc. Old MMOs follow a more open approach, starting with having actual skills, attributes and the like, and also still retain the 4th role in groups -- crowd control -- which has been reduced massively down to near non-existence and spread over the remaining 3 roles in SWTOR, for example. One possibility out of all that is that items can have requirements based on skill and attributes alone -- no level reqs at all -- which opens up other opportunities, including a more freeform weapons selection for your characters. And depending on the weapon (or the skills actually) you have actions made available to you. You would need to redesign core parts of SWTOR to make this possible. While I prefer the older ways, I would never even think about attempting that with SWTOR.

There is also the "unity" ability, which reduces damage on both you and your companion by 50% for 15 seconds, via legacy (and light side stuff). And yes, Heroic Moment, which is often forgotten. There should be at least one ability, the BH one, which deals nice damage, but the more important part is the healing: 2% every 3 seconds. I'm not sure if that is also covered by the heal debuff from the admiral or if that actually bypasses it. In the latter case that means 2 minutes of constant HP regeneration, which should be enough to kill that guy. Note that the admiral drops a multitude of debuffs on you: slowdown, increase of damage received, lowered healing, etc. He can also be interrupted, so a combination of interrupts plus defensive abilities, heroic moment, and maybe also companion handling may get you there. I remember that my experience with him was quite a mixed bag over the different toons, from "I ded! and another try ..." to "yeah, whatever". Last one was actually a BH, but powertech tank at 75 in good gear, so the whole thing was "yeah, whatever".

I'm still newbish to SWTOR, but what I experienced recently when trying this VM FP business (on a <75 tank spec, NO hammer station, which I unselected) was somewhat of a mixed bag. First off, the allowed level range is huge for quite a lot of FPs. Means you have the full spectrum of players in there, lowbies up to capped players and newbies up to pro players. The key to make this successful but also enjoyable is communication, and before that, a group oriented mindset. The latter is often missing, combined with the lack of former, creates a very problematic mix, often resulting in issues which crop up latest in boss fights. Barely anyone will look out for your HP, and there are enough fights where running to an available heal station can be tricky already and then clicking on it is the next issue. All the while for example a sniper is positioned right beside such a thing but the thinking and focus is only on "self". Which means if you start taking matters into hand and communicate, it will work out eventually. Important here is to adapt the communication to the group; I've seen a number of pros who knew what they were doing, but they failed in how they communicated things very badly and in turn, made matters even worse. In the end, as an actual tank, you have the distinct advantage of being able to soak up and mitigate a lot more damage than any of the DPS, and if there is no tank, than whoever deals the most damage will effectively have the same problems but without any of the tankiness. Which means a group needs to be even more oriented towards "group think" than with a tank to be successful. That also means with a tank the group can make it through situations which could otherwise be classified as potentially deadly, i.e. there is a bit more room for error. All in all I often had more the feeling of carrying the groups than slowing them down, and once the usual group issues got resolved, the experience was quite enjoyable for everyone involved.

These clickies are part of the world state, and there can be quite some fallout for instancing that specifically while everything around it is shared. I'm not saying it is impossible to do technically, it just has a good few consequences down the line where I'm sure that this may backfire here and there when introduced. Aside of obvious problems like grouping up, where normally you'd expect a shared world state then etc. Within the current "framework" I think the simplest solution is to lower the timeout on a good few of these shared / open world clickies, as has been mentioned already.

Ever seen lightsabers with laser pointers for increased hit chance? I did; not in SWTOR, because there are no laser pointers you could modify your weapons with. But it highlights the problem: The game has to make sure that you cannot do this stuff and only the things which are within the bounds of what is allowed. Now if you have loadouts you have to bind that to loadouts and not the "social" gear, unless you are ok with seeing a pistol sniper, to give an example. This is why I brought up this over the top example of a lightsaber wielding BH who runs a sniper loadout and shoots you with that, just to drive the larger problem home. If you can do something like that in 3 minutes BW should maybe hire you, because then everything will be solved within a week! Ok, that was another over the top example, but you started it with these 3 minutes. PS: I may know a thing or two about software development.