It isn't hitching, it isn't frame rate, it isn't the players system. With all settings as low as possible, you still run into lag where the game freezes or where actions take seconds to complete (such as putting inventory into a hold or waiting for an elevator button). I've seen this on Voss and Odessa most often, though I've seen it in various FP's and Ops at a lesser extent. It's a server side issue, not client side.

No matter what they do, small guilds will be at a disadvantage over large guilds. The key is to ensure that conquest is not dominated by a single thing the way crafting dominated prior to these changes. Right now, nothing dominates. Yes, you can queue GSF or WZ's and do nothing, but that nothing requires time and doesn't reward many points. But if you actively compete in GSF or WZ's, winning provides more points at a faster rate. If you run SM ops or FP's, you can rack up even more points. The only issue I have right now is the "once per legacy" thing. This is wrong and needs to change to once per character. With the game being so alt centered, it makes sense to encourage activities on multiple alts. This also allows people with pub side and imp side guilded toons to compete in multiple guilds every week.

I've seldom seen an opinion this wrong. It's amazing people still believe this, but I suppose the people who believe that story is the only thing have to have some sliver of hope to cling to. This is an MMO. In order to be a successful MMO it has to have all of the aspects of an MMO. And if you believe that raiders don't sustain games, you have another think coming. Of course, no single aspect of an MMO can sustain it. Just raiding heavy content would chase away anyone who doesn't raid, PvP heavy content will chase away the non-PvP crowd, etc. So any time full focus is put on one aspect of an MMO, you'll eventually start bleeding players for who that aspect isn't important. Know why there are so many pro-story posts? Because people who aren't pro-story advocates are starting to trickle away. People who actually enjoy playing and doing won't stick around for hours of cut scenes interspersed with laughably simple quest mechanics against mobs that stand no chance against overpowered companions. Right now, this game caters to people who enjoy an easy mode face-roll. If that is EA/BW's target audience, so be it, but don't for one second believe that story is what has kept this game alive. That badge of honor goes to the Cartel Market, the most successful band-aid in MMO history that managed to squeeze money of out old Star Wars fans who were children in the late 70's and early 80's and who are now working men and women with disposable incomes and a thirst for all things Star Wars.

I'm not sure how it can be considered harder... Crafting one invasion force nets over a third of the weekly 20k requirement if you have a 100% SH bonus (which you should if you are seriously competing in Conquest) and running one SM operation and a few FP's can make up the rest. Any changes to conquest crafting that allow more points for crafting just skews the conquest back to crafting, which simply should not happen. Conquest should not be decided entirely on who can craft the most, it should be decided on which guild has enough members willing to play the game.

With the increase in ICJ schematics I've seen a corresponding decrease in Datacron deco drops. Typically I could see at least one per Heroic and now after grinding out most of the H2's I saw only one Datacron drop out of over 40 H2's. Wondering if there is any correlation between the two...

There are 3 Conquest weeks where crafting is repeatable. The rewards are smaller than they were, however. Conquest is a guild event. It should require guilds working towards the goal by actually doing ATK activities. Unfettered crafting completely overpowered the Conquest system and needed to be limited. The current system works far better than I expected it to and still has a few weeks where crafting is the major component. Prior to this change, all conquests were decided solely by crafting which was a bad system that needed fixed.

There are, if I've read this right, 3 Conquest events that allow repeatable crafting rewards. Basically, 25% of the events have a repeatable crafting component to them. Those rewards have been reduced and the amounts of available materials required increased...even though the number of materials used has been streamlined. It would be unfair to completely remove crafting heavy events and having only a quarter of the events lean towards crafting is justifiable. It provides small but alt heavy guilds to compete in at least a few event weeks instead of totally closing them out of any conquests.

Personally, I think it is very obvious that better communication from the team simply wouldn't make one bit of a difference. EA/BW has their business model and will follow through on that model regardless of what anyone here says. Sure, they've thrown a bone to the forum denizens every now and then...thanking us for our feedback in the same way a pre-school teacher praises a cute comment from a precocious student...but for the most part they just trundle on with whatever changes they've decided to make and damn the customers. For what it is, KotFE isn't bad. It's relatively bug free (by degrees of relatively...after 3.0 anything would look good) and the effort put into the narrative is superb. But it isn't a MMO any longer. It's a Single-player Online Role Playing Game. None of the H2's require two people and you simply can not group up during the story leveling process. The only group action comes at end game where we rehash old content that has been "leveled up" but which isn't a challenge at all. And for a game that encourages massive amounts of alts, it has made playing those alts difficult. After going through the story once, it's hard for me to do it a second time. I can't re-watch a movie I've just seen or re-read a book I've just read and find re-running the same story to be in the same vein, regardless of whether or not I can make minor changes to the story with my dialog decisions. Of course, there are some that are just fine with all of this. Good for them. I hope EA/BW profits from them but I play MMO's for the multi-player aspect, for the grouping and the camaraderie and it just isn't there for me. Increased communication isn't going to change any of this. Why should I care if they tell me what they are going to do when I know that A: what they are going to do is whatever they want to do, and B: it will probably be something I don't like? I re-subbed for 6 months when KotFE was announced, just in case it was worth it. I wish I would have waited a couple more weeks when we started getting an idea of where the game was going but that's money gone and I've blown more on worse. No amount of communication can change the fact that this game has become something I don't want and I simply do not feel it is worth the effort to put up a fight because, in the long run, it simply will not matter. For those who find this exactly what they want, congrats. Enjoy it. I'll keep an eye on the forums to see how that's going for you but I've pretty much washed my hands of the entire affair.

You would have an argument if Forex/Pierce were a necessary part of the Alliance mechanic. They are not. This exists to encourage people to PvP and to give PvP-centric players something in this game. As far as I can see, there are very few PvP related things in KotFE compared to the plethora of PvE related content. I don't PvP a lot, but I do PvP, and I still think there is nothing wrong with this. Again, the only people upset are the completionists who don't want to PvP.

The only "downside" to level sync is going after World Bosses that once again require you to honor the mechanics and have a group. Not really a downside in my opinion. Heroics were still easily completed though I can no longer round up dozens of mobs and AoE them down. And while it is annoying to get knocked off your mount, the solution is to not run through mobs on a vehicle but go around them instead.

Forex/Pierce are not PvE content. If they were, then the actions to recruit them would be PvE content related. Since recruiting them requires PvP (or your toon being the class that originally had those comps), that makes it PvP content. There will always be things added to MMO's to encourage people to PvP. If you don't want to PvP you do not have to PvP but you will not get the reward. The only people who will be bothered with this are "completionists" who don't PvP...pretty small sub-group really...or people who can't stand to see anything PvP exclusive, such as the Gree Event PvP missions on the terminal. Not doing the recruiting quest for Forex/Pierce will have zero effect on the PvE game, so it doesn't need to change.

I had a relatively new guildie and new SWTOR player post on our guild forums about getting /whisper messages from someone telling him he was a "bad player". He screenshotted the whisper and the final board. His team won, he was second from the top overall, second in DPS and tied in objectives with number one. The guy whispering him was in 4th from the bottom spot and had apparently spent the entire game trying to solo cap East in Novarre Coast. We told him to ignore the guy. He scrolled through the chat files and found out that this guy was the "Leader" and was apparently trying to get people to go to east when they had W and S tied up. Basically he was telling everyone they sucked because they didn't try to take East and not listening to his "leadership". Just ignore these guys, they aren't worth the time.

Homogenization and simplification are the new BW buzzwords so they can capitalize on the new movie bringing tons of kids into the game with mom and dad paying for their sub and goodies. Expect more like this in the future.

3. People saw the illegal info and decided to get what they could out of their mats before 4.0 turns them into vendor trash.

Mat prices were screwed prior to this announcement unless BW has changed their minds about crafting changes in 4.0

Talking about the effect on mat prices and the economy doesn't make sense until BW gets around to spilling the beans officially on the previously announced crafting changes. I find it curious that we are 37 days from the launch date of KotFE and have yet to hear any more about the crafting changes since the data was "unofficially released". Until the changes are made public officially, trying to determine the effect of the Conquest change on materials is contraindicated.

Gathering mats is trivial. Anyone who crafts knows the best way to get mats in the least amount of time. And yes, while it does take time it does not take me being ATK for any longer than it takes to send 5 (now 6) companions out on missions x22 toons with gathering crew skills. Right now (before this change takes effect) crafting is king and flat out is the deciding factor in every single Conquest battle for first place. It has been this way since Conquest started and has been a bone of contention across the board. Conquest is a guild thing. It was designed for guilds to do things together and to be rewarded for their actions...as a guild. Crafting has nothing to do with playing as a guild. Everything related to crafting is an individual effort, though those combined efforts benefit the guild as a whole. It's about time that crafting was relegated to a secondary role. No one should win a Conquest doing nothing more than crafting. With this change, players will either have to wait for one of the three Conquests that have repeatable crafting conquests or actually go out and do Flashpoints, Operations, PvP or GSF. They will have to go out after World Bosses or attack opposite faction bases. Until this change, you didn't have to do any of that. You just crafted, and that just isn't what Conquest was designed for. As for your views on PvP, no you can't easily get 3 matches in 45 minutes. I've seen times where getting 2 matches in an hour were problematic. A couple of nights a week you might get good pops but for the most part you just end up sitting in your SH or on fleet waiting. But one crafting change I'd support would be to keep Invasion Forces as they are now as far as mats and time to craft but have them replace the crafting repeatable for 250 points (500 with a full SH bonus). The amount of time and effort it takes to craft the prerequisite WS's and then craft the IF's would still force people to do things other than craft in order to win a planet. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by not being able to craft AFK, though... Edit: One more thing though... I'm in what is easily considered a medium sized guild, especially when compared to some real monster guilds out there who will take anyone at all. We've won some planets and when Conquest first started we were on the leader board every week on both our Pub side and Imp side guilds. After a couple of months we realized two things: First, it just wasn't worth the effort for a few titles and some guild ship things we could more easily get taking out commanders and second, until the larger guilds got their titles and stopped doing Conquest altogether no one else would win a planet. Crying that small guilds can't compete...well, they shouldn't be able to. Small guilds equals fewer people equals lower Conquest scores and saying that small guilds can't compete now...well, you couldn't compete before either. No matter how much you craft you won't defeat a larger guild doing the same exact thing. It's a moot point.

Nope. You and others are under the mistaken impression that PvP is easy to reach goal, and it isn't. First, you have to be ATK. People who have nothing else to do still have to queue and then have to win for max points. And you can only do that with one toon at a time. I've reached Conquest thru just PvP before. The most toons I've been able to do this on was 3 in a given week. In the same week 15 other toons reached goal through crafting alone.

So 25% of the Conquests. Still seems balanced to me. Other Conquests are focused on other aspects of game play and those aspects should be the focus, not crafting.

If I'm remembering correctly, didn't Obi-wan refer to a lightsaber as a "blade" in Ep IV?

I like this change, if only because it puts all aspects of game play on an even field. And if you'll notice, it's only the "Conquest: War Supplies" that is getting turned into a once per legacy achievement. Right now, it gives 500 per crafted War Supply. The Conquest rewards of 250 points for each of the specific War Supplies is still going to be available. So instead of getting 750 for each of the War Supplies you craft you'll only get 250 per and a one time 2000 point legacy craft. This puts crafting on par with PvP and FP/OPs. You can still "craft to victory" but it will take 3 times the number of crafted items it did before the change. And people running FPs and OPs or playing PvP can now compete on a level field. Of course, the people who do a little of everything will now take planets more readily without burning out their crafting supplies to do it.

Just out of curiosity, if 15 bucks a month is too much how can someone pay for the computer to run the game? Cheapest toaster I've seen lately runs around 300 bucks.

Using Scavenging and Bioanalysis plus Slicing, I've easily banked over 6 million credits leveling up a toon from scratch without "outside" assistance. I like Scavenging and Bioanalysis simply because you can harvest strong beast and droid mobs for mats as well as harvest nodes. Slicing is just gathering free credits, so that one has always been a no brainer for me.

The Imp H2 was the hardest as far as I was concerned. Getting all 4 panels in the poison gas room requires speed and no mistakes. I used a Merc, burned all my defensive CD's and had a healer companion out and got the 4th panel just before I died. As long as you get the 4th panel you'll be successful even if you die. If you don't, you get kicked out and have to start over.

Since Ravage is the mirror, I looked up synonyms for ravage hoping to see something that felt "Light side". About the only thing I saw was Havoc. Since there is a Havoc squad, I wasn't sure it'd be proper to have a Havoc Strike ability but it isn't a bad name really. Edit: Or maybe Saber Havoc? Meh, regardless, I don't think it really matters much what they call it. Master Strike by any other name is still going to be used by Knights.