IDK, one-sided pvp is all the rage. mostly the rage. what else needs fixing ?

definitely agree nar shadaa should have more speeder accessible terrain/areas, as it's painful to navigate just to find a vendor/cantina/GTN in the central location. belsavis is probably the one area i've been able to ride around inside buildings so far, and it's a godsend for that planet. i know there's combat areas that have speeder access, but the promenade area and the spaceport are still backwards iirc. i think it takes 6-8 minutes to go from the ship to the neutral GTN point, which is a very long walk, and there's nowhere you can really jump onto a speeder in that route to speed it up. opening up speeder access, or placing a neutral GTN on another planet in the area, would do a lot to encourage player separation and general thoroughfare options for a diverse economy. eventually, they will bring someone in who can see a bigger picture that overall helps the entire economy, not just endgame, but it might take them a while. you mean the whole [fissure] and [chaos bolt] trade chat spam in other MMOs ?

i think the problem is if you don't have a few of each mod, that every mod has to come from existing custom gear, or other gear, etc. that's going to be tedious if you don't know what mods you want in advance, or have to take it from existing gear. that said, it's going to be pretty static at this stage, people are already theorycrafting the stats for each class and working out the effect on rotations, etc. i imagine there's already a spreadsheet on how to effectively raid-spec custom gear using commendation/pvp level mods, and how many you need of each, etc. so it wouldn't be any more tedious than collecting the commendations or the gear itself via operations.

1) mob groups are designed for companions to pull threat, and to have 2 or three characters pulling a group. it's much easier with a friend/partner to chain-pull groups than to have to solo elites, or have 2 healer companions, etc. i do find the "fill the room with 99 filler mobs" kind of dull, as they are purely there to fill a niche instead of providing a challenge. a significant amount of belsavis or taris, is just drudgery to navigate through a sea of 40-70 mobs to get to one terminal, hit it, and then travel all the way back. even some very visually awesome heroics are created purely as 'walk past/kill 200 mobs, destroy 1 item, kill boss that spawns, pick up reward, leave". there is an annoying lean towards constant CC and interrupt abilities and companions not getting out of the fire, etc. but that's part of the combat subsystem and players are there to fulfill those roles. i.e. the difference in heroic 2 and heroic 4, is that there's mob groups of 4-5 in heroic 4's and they nearly all need CC/interrupts, or require tactics to pull the more or least dangerous out of a tight-knit group and take them down separately. 2) to all extents, custom gear is that arbitration of gear, so you can give robes/coats to troopers (which sometimes looks kick ***) or if you look at the commendation gear, you can often get pants without a spec or class limitation, so you could, could, have a jedi knight in pants and a wide brim hat, wielding a lightsaber, it's just a lot harder to pull off than would be reasonable and you'd lose a fair amount of stats trying to get the look of the smuggler's pvp commendation level hat, iirc. i think there's 3 brim hats in the game, but it's not orange/custom, and it has an akward chin strap, as opposed to a tiara or nappy/turban/faux ***** helms that i've picked up as BoE items, not the darth helms, but the JC version is quite not mushroom shaped. another cosmetic/RP problem is also pistols rifles and sabers, are not depicted on the preview doll, and examples of the in-game art are sorely missing, so you don't know what an item loos or sounds like until you see a video of someone with it. i assume BWA has a few art library sketches and outlines/prints for each weapon, but it's internal. there's already some attempts at a swtor gallery for empire that i've seen, and one for smugglers in their threads, etc.

prologue screens, for want of a better word, are often lagged when you log in and out of separate characters. (what's interesting is being close to level 47, and in theory, still being in act 2. but ehh ...) once you hit a stage in your class quest i.e. finish some objective or kill someone new, more often, and then log out, you should be getting a changed prologue screen. my advice is to find a cantina, log out, log back in, focus on the class quest instead of general questing, usually after some "kill X", then log out again, and see if it changes. occasionally, you'll get your prologue's mixed up, and an alt's prologue will show up for your character. this doesn't really change anything, except put you out of sync when you get into the game and have forgotten where you were heading/doing.

it is disturbing that they left the GTN as-is from the beta 8 months ago, and while beta does mean that there's a flexibility in changes, etc. performing UI changes like the recent 1.1.4 patch is ultimately concerning, because there's a supposed crew of 50-60* people still working on the live game, not just future content. and they are not really pulling out all the stops so far. (* or the 12 people on the live crew who are supposed to fix PvP, could/will be on holidays playing ME3 instead) hopefully those in the SWTOR summit will get some feedback on what's coming, but there's so much scope for simple, life-improving changes that don't ruin balance or gameplay, and there's been significant changes in the last 3 months, but there's another 3 months of paid time that people will want to see their suggestions made into reality.

mine's similar, but 16GB DDR3 750w seasonic x, gold rated PSU + 1kVA UPS 120GB SSD, HD6970 - WC'd 11tb storage. and yeah, i get surges in FPS as well, it's not pretty. the occasional surges, which i imagine would cripple lesser machines, i just have time to look around while NPC's react in 10fps glory, while i lose health, the UI then shows dead pvp players, etc. 80% of the time, the loading is alleviated with 4gb allocated to fancycache and 2gb allocated to a ramdisk cache, but planets like belsavis, balmorra, and taris, are pretty chaotic, if i turn the camera a certain way, it chokes to 10-15fps, and other times it's 30+ i kinda believe it's related to things like bloom, particle/shadow rendering and speedtree related engine threading performance, but it's not the only consideration that the game engine makes, and i haven't updated my video drivers in like a month, so that's also suspect. PvP, is arguable, i get latency surges, combat, sometimes turns silent and FPS drops when spinning around on the fleet ships with ~20 people on board, but other times it's fine with 120-200 people on the station, collecting mail, and driving in circles waiting for companions to craft items, etc. i don't know what to tweak for my HD6970 GPU, so i've left it alone for a while until AA comes along for ATI users, and things may pick up again when those tweaks arrive in the game, until then, i'll be the healer occasionally kolto cloud/triage healing the recently dead.

my bad. i'll make the change. i know what you mean, when you do a sql query, you can sort the results by two different columns to achieve this, i.e. order by "name" DESC, "price" ASC , it just didn't occur to specify it, as it's kinda obvious that it's the way to go, but if they can screw up the little things like searching, then you're right to bring it up.

GTN = Galactic Trade Network. the Auction House equivalent for SWTOR

Added some new content, and a bit of a splash of color to the front page. Edit: did have some concept of the stagnant prices with extended item deposit timeframes, but it really comes up when everyone resorts to addons that people start to equalise their prices to artificial levels adding in extreme deposit costs for a 3 day deposit isn't too bad, because it evens out as people will move around those 300% markup items with 40% deposits and offer cheaper auction items with shorter deposit periods and shorter deposit costs. idk, i see a few problems that come up, such as custom price floods. extending the 50 item limit will help with crafting item supplies while levelling, but it's more to alleviate the problem that levelling players often collect 5-10+ BoE or GTN sellable items per planet, that they don't have alts to mail their spillover items to, or the bank space to store. a player that visits ~12 planets, flashpoints, etc. would likely have 60-120 items to sell, at least. a player levelling a crafting or gathering profession, likely has 5-10 items they would sell, at least, that players at the same level would want, i.e. armor/mods/barrels/crystals, etc. as well as consumables.

The GTN Super-Wish-List Now "80% less stupid" what's the top 3 or 4 (or 10) things you'd like to add to the GTN that are missing / broken / game breaking for you ? the list now stands at 70 items, the short list at 13/16 items. Short List of Requested changes/ideas for improvement Auctioneer/Auctionator features, WoW's Current AH / AH Addons / WoW addons (same deal, different word arrangement) EVE Online (or) Buy orders Search Queries return results without having to choose from a category. Search Queries work with partial words, i.e. "ant" brings up pants, warrant, guarantee, etc. Posting more than 50 items Drop Down filters for custom quality (orange) gear Drop Down filters for Boots, Belt, Bracers, Gloves, etc. in armor items. Listed items can be sorted by per-item cost, instead of total (stack) cost. Browse items by Primary Stats, i.e. Aim/Willpower/Strength/Cunning or armor type. Usable Gear finds equippable gear based on current skill tree (+power, +crit, +shield, etc.) Browsing for "My" gear/companion gear, looks for equippable items, for the current spec/companion spec, +/- 3 levels, unless level 50 Placing an item for sale, searches for and brings up a list of the current item prices for current sale items on the right hand side of the window. when posting an item, if you used a custom value, it will save the value. Removing the 1 hr mail delay from sale to collection of funds Adding in Neutral GTN's everywhere A Remote Access GTN / Remote Crew skill App/Website Here's what's enabled for 1.2's Legacy "Jesus" Patch Search Queries return results without having to choose from a category. - - partially working Drop Down filters for custom quality (orange) gear The addition of a Neutral GTN on the ship, if your legacy level and credits are high enough. Here's what's broken in Patch 1.2 searching a main category, will only show grey quailty items by default, so you won't see companion gifts, armor mods, crafting items or miscellaneous goods, unless you also choose a quality type , i.e. green/blue/purple, etc. changing the search quality after you perform an initial search does not change the search results, you have to re-enter the search criteria. search for items Equippable by Me/Companion, doesn't work at all. Spec-Specific criteria are not matched i.e. surge/alacrity/shield/defense. the addition of a Ship GTN console for the neutral GTN, the HCTN, for the grand price of 5 million credits OR level 35 Legacy. Pursuing this using regular methods will be time-consuming. in general, Farming Legacy is more effective with flashpoints, warzones and dailies at level 50. Here's what's planned for 1.2's Legacy "Jesus" Patch to 1.3 or "future" patch/PTS content Suggestions for Contracted Craft orders for guilds, or Guild messageboard/calendar in-game. the Contract crafting system was mentioned in the recent Guild Summit, but is still pending as a definitive or possible 1.3 feature. and now for the complete list of items Search Filters Search Queries return results without having to choose from a category. Search Queries work with partial words, i.e. "*ant*" brings up pants, warrant, guarantee, etc. Search Queries use boolean search functions AND/OR/NEAR (i.e. echani +gloves -robe) Search Query Entry box to have focus Search accepts the enter key to perform a search Buttons, dialog boxes, scroll bars and drop downs have tab selection and tab order The Filter Reset button to be moved away from the search query dialog box. Search Query window remembers the last 5 searches, and shows a drop down box. After the Search Query entry box, add an "Advanced" button, which changes the search query area at the top of the UI, to search for pre-arranged lists of items, additional filters and more features. Adding in new Filters and more options in each drop-down list Collective filters for stats, like +defense or +cunning on gear Drop Down filters for custom quality (orange) gear Drop Down filters for Boots, Belt, Bracers, Gloves, etc. in armor items. item filters that you can toggle on/off for showing only R-E, Learnable or equippable items, showing RE/equippable/learnable items in a unique colour/shade/opacity/symbol to a regular item or learned mission/crafting schematic. Browsing listed items display a per-item value for item stacks (not as a mouseover) listed items can be sorted by per-item cost, instead of total (stack) cost. listed items can be sorted by name, with the lowest priced (per item) first. Browse armor types by Light/Medium/Heavy and by armor slot for each armor type. Browse items by Primary Stats, i.e. Aim/Willpower/Strength/Cunning or armor type. Miscellaneous, to have a subtype for Companion Gifts. Crafting materials/companion gifts can be filtered by Grade (as a range from X to Y), or by Quality Usable Gear finds equippable gear based on current skill tree (+power, +crit, +shield, etc.) Browsing for "My" gear, looks for equippable items, for my current spec, +/- 3 levels, unless level 50 Browsing for Companion gear, looks for Gear with the correct Spec (defense/crit) for companions, +/- 6 levels unless level 50. Using +defense and +crit in the search criteria for companion gear, or just getting that feature to work at all. list items by a particular seller, or sortable by sellers Companion gear searches use the "selected companion" gear slot to compare with in the mouseover tooltip, instead of the Player/Current Companion's slot item. this way you can search for droid gear, without having a droid companion present. Adding in more detailed filters for item levels, pricing brackets, and other filters to the search dropdown (see section above) Saving previous searches so you can search for companion gear, bargains, etc. from the dropdown (see section above) Double Clicking an item, purchases it. Single Clicking on an item, shows a dropdown with stats for the item, current sellers and a per-item price Selling Items Panel Placing an item for sale, searches for and brings up a list of the current item prices for current sale items on the right hand side of the window. Placing an item, will remember the previous item post cost if you used a custom value Placing an item for sale, and using a custom price will then display a check box to remember that value for future sales. placing an item for sale, you can save stack size, price per item, and the number of auctions of an item as part of the custom price area. Posted sales to appear in a new tab/Panel at the bottom of the GTN window When on the sale tab, Ctrl-Clicking on an item in your inventory, does a search for that item in the sales panel Having items listed for 1,2,3 days with 10%, 25%, 40% deposit costs for those items. Lowering Deposit costs for HCTN/Neutral GTN items. Adding a Bid price for items. Placing a stack of items for sale means that buyers can buy partial amounts of that stack. History Panel Add a new Tab/Panel at the bottom of the GTN UI for Sales History, visually similar to the Buy Panel. By default, it shows all items sold in the last 30 days, grouped together by their name. Items are grouped by their name. Selecting an item, brings up a table with the sales of that item in detail. A Search bar will filter results of sold items by name. Filters will search for Date ranges, minimum/maximum quantity, minimum/maximum price per item and item quality. Show previous sales data (time, price, buyer name, quantity) for each item that is placed for sale, sorted by item name or date. Guild GTN Panel Guild Vault items will show in a GTN Tab/panel, with unlimited/99 item stacks, from items stored in a specific Guild Bank tab. Guild members with suficient rank can buy single or small stacks of items from the tab. Guild Officers can change prices or take items out of the GTN tab as needed if their rank is sufficiently high enough and have a security key Guild tab deposit access, pricing, max items to sell per week, etc. to be managed by security key enabled guild admins. Guild GTN panels can also allow depositing of goods for items already deposited on the GTN exchange. Adding a Guild Exchange tab, to create crafting contracts with players in the guild. Guild Exchange is divided in 2 parts, Members Trading Network, and Crafting Orders. Guild members with high rank can place Crafting Orders, which will place the entire deposit sum into the Guild Bank, with a set price per item, up to 14 day expiration date, and a listing/link to the item for display in the Guild News Tab. Crafting Orders completed within the first 25% of the deposit time, will earn a 10% payment bonus, for any players who successfully submit an item towards completing an order before the bonus expires. Guild Members of any rank can craft items and complete an order by depositing partial items and receiving rewards for completing the Crafting Order in the timeframe. Guild members with low rank can submit 2 item stacks for sale in the Guild Exchange tab, higher rank members with security keys can sell up to 10 different items in stacks of 20/50/100, goods will be stored in the Guild bank, and members can purchase items at a set price from the list of Guild Exchange items. Server/Database Features Search Queries delivered and parsed by the client, instead of the server. Posting more than 50 items Removing the 1 hr mail delay from sale to collection of funds, changed to batch operations to save the mail system's resources. modifying the greater number of Bind on Equip items from mobs, flashpoint and operation bosses, quest and commendation dropped items to be Reverse-engineered, to remove a glut of mid-level items from the GTN. this may not have to include commendation equipment, but preferably, it should. Create a set of batch queues for database operations to allow Bulk purchasing of orders for the Buy Orders system. Ideals, fantasies and curiosities EverQuest Nostalgia: Add in a place where you can stand next to the person who you want to trade with, then drop your inventory items on the ground, so that other people can pick them up. potential name : Eastern Valley / Qeyno's Folly ? XML parses of the GTN database parsed and processed off-server so people can post or purchase items remotely from their character's bank/inventory/mailbox using a secure website or smartphone application. LUA connections added to UI so that people can implement WoW addons and pretend they work. Hutt Cartel Trade Network (HCTN) vendors on the Fleet, in that empty space where the Underworld Surgery /cosmetic alteration vendor was/is/will be, next to the regular GTN vendors. Extra HCTN (neutral GTN) vendors on Tattooine / Ilum Non - Faction GTNs -- all Fleet/capital world/Nar Shaddaa GTNs use the HCTN / Neutral GTN database. A Buy Order and Sell Order system (EVE ONLINE) that allows contracted payment for a certain item to be delivered or purchased, that will pay for partial completion, allow partial purchases of stacked items. Selecting a required item in the crafting window that requires Grade X materials to complete, will open up a dialog box that will display a list of 10 current GTN listed items, which will then allow you to select and purchase the selected items via your companion, a short timer will be attached anything else you'd like to see in the GTN ? apart from the crushingly obvious link to WoW AH features, the perennial desire of using auction addons, to enable auto-posting and database records of all the buyers and sellers of your items, auto-crafting to stock up on items, remote/website GTN access, posting items from a player's bank, etc. and so on, etc Edit #1: 21/2 i thought i'd edit this a bit, to add in other people's suggestions ... Edit #2: 23/2 added categories, colour (it's like color, but in empire-friendly british english) , various suggested items Edit #3: fixed a sorting item, Edit #4: changed neutral GTN to Hutt Cartel Trade Network (sigh) for precision. Edit #5: broke down some listings, added suggestions. Edit #6: been busy, sic. added gifts and suggestions for buy orders (EVE online) Edit #7: Guild Summit inspired me to change the topic title. also realized nobody reads the whole list, so added a brief summary of anything repeated 5x or more by other people. Edit #8: updated content for Patch 1.2 and the forum's Grey epoch update -- added white text as highlight, changed sizes for better contrast with larger default font choice.

i got through the wampa cave with aakavi, CC didnt' help a lot, so i had to heal aakavi and put the shield up on myself a few times, which was brutal. i died a lot more getting out than taking on the first few, taking on 3+ was not ideal. i generally died a lot more taking on elites in group areas, and the 6-7 minute speeder ride back, sigh. some like it hoth, i guess. by the way, i'd suggest levelling up and gearing up, i'm level 42 now, and the 2nd part is still horrible, those champion pairs and trios/elites do not play nice in the part after the cave where you have to disable security, etc.

EDIT: sigh, i wonder how hard the jedi now are, since 1.1.2, and their toughness has been reduced, it used to take quite a while to DPS down the jedi past 30%. as noted, if you pull threat off the duo, it's a much, much harder fight, and if you pull both, it's a shorter fight, as you don't live that long. ended up doing something similar to this at lv28 and lv 29 as sawbones. ended up switching off AE grenades, bowdaar was near unhealable due to pulling "both" jedi, sigh. nothing really worked using standard tactics. so... did a bit of reading here, switched to corso after visiting the GTN for some upgrades and implants, etc for level 29, and switched off the lol-poon & grenades, again, and triggered it manually when up on the bridge. after downing diego, then healing up before the jedi pull, that part was easy enough. they aren't at 50%, it's more like 96% and they do barely any damage to each other, i tried to pull towards the bridge, but that kind of went skewy after the other jedi came along and decided to step in. i brought the jedi down to 20% ish, then died before corso did, as i was healing him too often, than myself (interrupts + death field, sigh) 2nd attempt, i pulled towards the right hand side where there's cover and could lol-poon from a distance, cc diego, etc. and generally out-heal from a distance, then once he's far enough back, use interrupts and move in, while keeping health up all the time. interrupting the jedi/sith is a bit harder than normal, death field hits quite hard for what is a puddle effect. overall, it was good training, as there's that "other fight" that pops up on/after alderaan, that's also nearly as tough at level 31 as lightspring. i.e. fighting a level 33 elite with bowdaar, was miserable, but tough.

i am very aware that as a smuggler, i haven't actually smuggled ANYTHING in this game so far. the three occasions i tried, i kept destroying the items to prevent getting caught or taking a profit, etc. so far, if i could shoot corso and make money doing so, i would, and i'm not entirely sure how a smuggler survives long enough to have their own ship if they keep LS points going. bah anyway, playing as a neutral aligned character, is a challenge. not just relics, for which you can go datacron & shard hunting, or run commendations, those are givens. other relic options come up later that are not LS/DS vendor items, i don't think all of them have alignment options, just some. and from what i've seen on torhead, relic choices are pretty poor, /use trinkets especially. this search may work, idk if it's applicable, the search criteria are somewhat broken in this regard http://www.torhead.com/items/catg/2/subcatg/4/alignment/eq/none/and/ability/eq/1/and/slot/49 shows 18/196 relics. Aligned LS/DS relics make up nearly half of the 196 relics (90/196), and most of the BoE/GTN sold relics are aligned. i personally found that the hardest characters to stay neutral, were the jedi/sith, every choice is a deal-breaker. i.e. do you NEED to shoot the person who's asking you to save their family, or do you HAVE to gift some poor orphan credits and a reason to live ... every time ? or return the item you farmed from the cold dead hands of level 50 pirates for an XP reward and a commendation of "well done, glad you haven't murdered me yet for the 154 credits i have in my pocket" in a game where i can't murder my annoying companions and dump them out of an airlock in my own space ship, or murder those rather too wealthy quartermaster NPC's that hold PvP commendation gear, and all those other NPC's, then dump them out of an airlock as well, neutrality is overrated, i'd rather be infamous.

hang on, let me clarify that a bit more ... i would suggest, the bads might be the least of the problems you present in the suggestion indicated.

as far back as beta, there was the notion that you could unlock new companions. finally culminating in the desire to have HK-47 back as a healer/DPS companion. later legacy levels could introduce it, as a "reward" for time served. unlocked by a quest or such, to replace the ship droid, at a vendor at a later time in the game universe, so you'd still have to suffer through levelling up, but then swap him over, so you didn't have too much fun with your overstuffed cushions.

practically, it could NEVER happen. the NPCs would be nearly, to the point of absurdity, invulnerable, you doubtless would not be. varriable reality i.e. disease, pestilence, hunger & famine, resource allocation, water purity, etc. not to mention, exhaustion, caloric/dietary irregularity, weapon maintenance, misfires, ammunition, several kinds and varieties of fatigue, adrenal and hydration related fatigue, all can be added to any game as a particle effect, debuff, and stat decrease, as well as the acceleration of effects over time. that's all incidental. the problem of immersive salience, i.e. 'real hawwdcaww shizzle' is that it's not heroic. or necessary. there's danger, but there's no sense of connect to any sense of achievement either. the punitive measure has to be seen as more than simple "life is hard, suck it up princess" there has to be acute and realistic precedence and prevention, you can't just pick up dysentry from a door handle, no matter how "glorious" a cause it would be then have to spend the next 4 real-time months buying and using self-expiring antibiotics or face impending death every ~2 hours (i am of course, making fun of far cry 2, by turning something trivial into it's MMO timeframe counterpart.) things that could be added to increase salient difficulty are not present for explicit reasons. those explicit reasons are that a) reality is better than the video game implementation of reality b) every attempt to make a player sick, has failed to make players think they were sick. c) there is no way it can be seen in any other way than a handicapping system. d) hero's don't get sick, or visit the bathroom. e) the heroes that can, don't flush. or need to. in games where illness or 'carriers' are present, the knowledge of medical or remedial spawn points and health locations would pre-empt any kind of exploration effort or PvP campaign. in an MMO environment, players are evil to other players if given the choice. it would only serve to encourage stims/boosts/resource collection, and the inverse, resource hoarding, resource restriction/destruction and spawn camping. i point to far cry 2's "ahh im sick of malaria (sic), let me jab some morphine and meth into my veins to addle the pain, or chew on a strange tablet to get better every 40 MINUTES" in the best case scenario, a weekly 6 hour maintenance window would kill half the server population. or SLEEPING .... .... here's an idea. DIY hard mode. play in warzones without armor. see if you can carry the ball and score in huttball without that pesky need for armor or resilience or "padding", pretend you're playing rugby instead.

it's a simple thing i guess, but it's really something that may help people who get this issue, and it would be easy enough to implement. in theory. for those who've experienced it, if you get stuck, while you're "in combat", or the 'falling' animation cycle, the game engine can and will prevent you from moving, jumping or using abilities, like crouch, transport, fleet pass, etc. also from logging out in a normal manner, or going AFK. force quitting the application, will work, but it will resurrect the player in the same position upon logging back into the world. /stuck, only goes so far, it doesn't always kill you, it also drops you in precisely the same place which can be problematic, and if you're in a static area without NPC's, you'll just be /stuck. and there's a timer on it as well, which is less than instructive. the reasoning is sound, it places a resource limit to prevent people trying to /stuck through terrain gaps or exploiting vector issues, i.e. datacron hunting or in warzones to skip through transitional walls. funnily enough, i had more success with /stuck in the beta than in the retail game, but it could just be the four or five times i've used it, were related to quests, where you're ported to a static location after exiting the conversation. but, i have the crazy, persistent notion from my short, short time with physX that it's a collision with higher than normal velocity which results in a transposed collision, i.e. where you're inside the terrain or an object, and the collision detection is unable to process an exit vector, so you get stuck in an animation loop where the collision bounds are unable to move, even to animate as the engine can't process the physics, and prevents movement. could be wrong, not all CD is the same, nor are the physics systems, but they often share characteristics, i.e. raycasting, sphere/vertex bounds, etc. normally, mesh vertex collision "pops" you out in those instances, but it's largely an engine problem, which means you have to have collision boxes on everything, i.e. see http://hewiki.heroengine.com/wiki/Collision_representation for more info than you want or need on this. using /stuck, doesn't seem to add or check if the collision bound is corrupted or inside another collision bound. it would involve a physics plugin in engine that could (possibly) raycast inside the collision bound, rather than outside of it. but that's errant speculation. it may be that /stuck, would be better if it also elevated i.e. applied a vertical "push" to avoid the transposing CD bound, and/or "reset" the collision on the player, but that adds complications to the physics subsystem. or a second command, /resurrect, should transport your character back to the nearest medical spawn point in the event that you can't fix the physics problem. preferably without the repair cost. much cleaner. simpler. cheaper to implement.

i can imagine this would be the kind of thing you'd need a guild of people to do .. ... ... ... /sigh saturday shenanigans. 1pm to 8pm, datacron hunting.

i'd be highly surprised if that works, but, you'd also miss the relic crystal on the top, which get excessively more insane on the later planets, up to the +10 datacrons needing a group of 4 i watched the videos and read a few different guides on the datacrons before attempting it, i think 1hr is the minimum (edit 40 minutes) knowing if you jump too soon or too late, you will have to do it all again, even the drop for the datacron. that's not something you will enjoy if you miss the ledge by pixels.

if a green item has an augment slot, it should be fine. (crafting occasionally, i.e. 1/100 times gives an augment slot) else, it won't show up in the list at all. not even rare/epic gear, it has to have an augment or mod slot to show up. the ctrl+ rt click mod-replacement UI, is supposed to be the same UI for the GES as the mod-replacement UI i agree, i has screwed up in the few times i've used it in the retail version of the game (before the recent patches), the item listing on the GES gets scrambled, and the mod-replacement UI panel doesn't load for the item. other times, it works as normal. it may be the particular station is bugged, i haven't tried using them recently at all. it has worked fine in the betas that i tried (empire side) , so IDK what happened. the problem is, there's often only a limited number of GES or GIES around, to the point of obscurity. one can hope that legacy levels removes or blunts some of the costs of things like repairs and mod removal, or does something better and sexier still.

i'd suggest looking for guides. first up, if it's a pure "what class is better", check with http://exvotos.com/theorycrafting/viewtopic.php?f=179&t=665 for what class brings what benefit, most smugglers have their AC, scoundrel or gunslinger locked-in, but decide if you prefer long range & shooting from cover and dual wielding burst, vs close range melee and healing options. you do get a few hours to decide at level 10 ... ... and you can always roll 2 smugglers ... /shrug ----------------------------------------------- for crew skills, you do have a lot of choices, mostly armstech, armortech (ehh), cybertech (mods + ship mods) and biochem (stims/implants) as crafting skills. all of the crew skills and crafting is bound to the GTN, so until the GTN changes to make buying and selling easier, don't expect to make much money on sellable crafted items, unless they are desirable, or in the future, made desirable. i.e. augment slot mods, better-than-tier epic crafted items, or epic crafted mods, or mods with procs, the wishlist is endless, the chances are low. so, the idea is to craft items that you would use yourself, and if they sell, that's also fantastic. or, just pick up slicing and gathering skills, avoiding the mission related ones until you have the time or spare cash to level it. the only advice i have is, have fun with professions, there's no real min/max or theorycrafting that makes any of them more desirable than any other, except for biochem, and the advantage is so large, that it's akward to recommend anything else if you're min-maxing for DPS. so far, the game's not reliant on minmax raiding, but your guild may have standards and expectations for their players, YMMV this image helps show the relationship between all three skill tiers for each class, http://www.starwarsmmolevelingguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/SWTOR-Crew-Skills.jpg for a smuggler, arms & armor will help you RE some of the quest gear, and get some pretty good gear that's not dropping from questing on every single planet. both are cheap to level up, you can sell the prototype (blue) and epic gear, which you learn from RE'ing the crafted items and quest items you come across (the expensive part of crafting skills), which is often better than quest gear. and you can sell the metals you gather from scavenging to other arms/armortech using alts or on the GTN. especially the researched items. sadly, most commendation gear will beat the pants off epic crafted gear, so arms/armor can feel like a waste until you get it capped to 400, and then it really feels punitive. but if you don't care about money, and you mostly won't after level 40, it's a fun profession to have if you have alts or like the idea of crafting items for people. cybertech/biochem are more profitable, once you get past the 300's and sell the better items. Earpieces, implants and ship mods are usually good sellers, you won't sell a lot of items to begin with, but implants and stims make very steady cash for people doing heroics and operations if you keep a steady supply posted every day or so, cybertech may be the crafting skill most likely to make serious cash after they add more crafting content, but it has a long way to go to reach the everyday utility of biochem. slicing is a good gathering option if you want early credits, and you'll probably want 50k for your first speeder (and your abilities) at level 25, and 100k to 300k in reserve if you want to level up a full set of professions beyond 200-300 on alts, or to buy up abilities/skills in later levels. you will have fun with slicing and gathering if you have no desire for crafting items, or need to craft items, it's a fun way to explore the planets and get ahead in flashpoints as well. in general, mission skills are the most expensive to level, and offer very little back, 1-6% of the time, you'll get rare/exotic items that nobody else will have, or if you choose diplomacy, LS/DS points and rare items. so far, there's no PvE/PvP advantage for any skill except for biochem users, and this may change in the future as people migrate from other professions to biochem for raid/PvE/PvP competitiveness., or whenever biochem gets nerfed enough to prevent the staggering increase it offers. ------------------------------------------- arguably, PvP and most of PvE is going to be significantly more about medium range melee and healing/CC, but it's not the only game in town and gunslingers have decent survival options, no idea how PvP is for gunslingers, but i imagine it's opportunistic. i can see how it can be a bit skewed towards scoundrel, as the tier sets, enforcer/field medic are scoundrel sets, and field tech are for gunslingers, but it's not purely set around those few trees. it just feels that way. i prefer scoundrel, because healing is a nice fallback if you want to do more in the game with a single character. but it's not the only game around. the two sites i mostly fall back towards are the SithWarrior.com guides, and those rare gems, SWTOR forum post/guides for those times when the forums aren't down. Scoundrel - DPS http://sithwarrior.com/forums/Thread-Scoundrel-Operative-DPS-Compendium Gunslinger DPS http://wearenex.us/forum/page/1/m/2934557/viewthread/1753739-smuggler-gunslinger-sharpshooter-pve-end-game-guideline http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=59739 Scoundrel - Sawbones Healing http://sithwarrior.com/forums/Thread-Scoundrel-Operative-Healing-Compendium for stats, scoundrel DPS, it's Accuracy (until breakpoint) > Cunning > Critical Rating/Surge Rating > Power > Alacrity for healers, it's Cunning >= Power > Crit (to ~350) > Surge > Crit (after ~350) > Alacrity you won't really start seeing crit/surge/alacrity on gear until after lv30, so don't be too concerned if you're not getting a lot of accuracy/power, or presence (sic), etc.

not precisely a crit bug, it's a GCD queue problem on the client side. if the server is accepting the queued command as part of the original cast, then it might be a GCD command queue exploit, and it would affect other casted abilities on other classes as well. hard to say without clinet and server logging, and the client logging isn't there, only the brief flashes on the UI, which is not always accurate or live-updated, as most all healers know. its arguable that it is an exploit, rather than poor implementation of the buff on the server side. it may get hotfixed, or extended duration to affect haste on casted abilities, or rolled into a healer-only spec tree item if it's needed for 'PvE' healing numbers. that said, PvP, burst healing, idk. Paper: "Rock is fine, Nerf Scissors." Rock: "Nerf paper, or i'll quit this game, right now" Scissors: "PvP is so unbalanced in this game, now that Rock is exploiting..."

yes, ivory is a bug, amusingly named though, since that's not "Him"/'Her"/"It". strange to see it/her/him in the ship, since it's obviously a placeholder. here's a pic http://i.imgur.com/0jMAG.jpg anyway. consider the rest of this a spoiler if you haven't finished act 1, don't click the images if you haven't finished act 1, blah blah blah. ... if you want strange, open up your crafting window, and queue up risha to craft something. YOU'LL NOW HAVE 3 RISHA'S You'll have Risha in the engine room if she's a companion, http://i.imgur.com/oVn89.jpg Risha in the cargo hold, standing near her usual spot,http://i.imgur.com/9HINj.jpg and Risha again, at the crafting table, without a nameplate. http://i.imgur.com/bJZtj.jpg you'll also have two corso's and a bowdaar if they're crafting, etc. and sometimes bowdaar and corso, turn transparent in their usual spots, but with the nameplate still attached to their invisible spot.

you will want to be over the starting level beyond nar shadaa, those quests can be vicious to attempt at the recommended level, i finished my class's Act 1 questline at 31, and it was enormously difficult on some bosses, requiring several attempts. the only problem i have with the Alt's outlevelling areas too fast, is in the grey quests not rewarding credits/xp on any reasonable basis when completing old quests on the previous planets. going back to complete bonus series quests, will probably reward legacy points in droves, but i don't quite know why its a good thing ?? i seem to have 2/3 of a bar and gained 3 levels since getting the first legacy, i assume the plans will kick in retroactively with guild rewards and gear rewards ?