Just tagging thread for march earnings so I can publicly call people out and rip on them till they run away in shame. Enjoy your night This soon the game should NOT be stable. It should be growing, even if in tiny amounts. Yet every week fleet pop is lower than the last. When I get on at 5pm and there are only 20 people on the fleet, that's a bad sign. You can try to talk around it "oh yeah, it's just those darn people on the forums", or you can try to lie "well, they are all off on a world having fun", you can try whatever you want. In the end the game feels more like a single player game. This is just stupid that this soon so many have left. Thats more than a "checking it out phase", that's more like a "we had serious issues but the devs ignored us and the fanboys raged when we tried to talk about it so we quit" phase.

You are assuming that it's 10000 people that love the game and 100 people that hate the game. It isn't the game that people hate. Instead you have people who are blatantly telling the developers "X isn't fun". You have fanboys who come along and say "well then leave". Now here is the shocker, people ARE leaving. Sure it results in fewer people having a problem with the game, but it also results in having 20 people on the fleet to actually do anything with. Criticism is not bad, personally I think criticism is great. Let me explain it in a different way. Say your mom bakes you a cake. You eat it, but you love your mom so you tell her how delicious and perfect the cake is. Then when your mom tries to sell the cake people say "hey, this taste like crap". You jump on them and tell them if they don't like it then leave. Now your mom can't sell a cake because no one wants to buy one that tastes like crap. If instead you had been honest with her to begin with she might have been able to fix it and actually make a decent cake that people would want to eat. If you hadn't told those people to just leave then maybe your mom could have used their input to make a decent cake. Either way what you are left with is a cake that taste like crap and no money because people won't buy it.

That advice is so stupid, and part of the reason this game has lost so many players. Instead of people acting like jerks you should welcome posts that don't point out the best in a game. If a majority of players find X to be not fun then maybe someone should consider THAT IT ISN'T FUN. Yes it's in caps, because the devs don't seem to get that. Oh and before you even think I'm one of those people that wants to see the game fail, check my join date on the left. I brought a guild over from WoW/Rift to play here. 3 people are left of it, and one hasn't logged on in 2 days. We are all on vent more than the game. They haven't disappeared, but a few simply can't think of reason to log in. People are unsubing, that should be blatantly obvious. For those of us still subbed though we would actually like to play an mmo, and not a single player game. That is what the game feels like most of the time now anyway. Planets with 5 people on them..really? I go to a planet and offer to run the heroics for people just to have something to do and there are no takers. I'm not saying SW is doomed, but people need to stop telling others to leave and instead listen for once to what might keep people subed.

O.k. we get that WoW is doing fine, but we are talking about The Old Republic in this thread. No one to blame but the fanboys for this. They killed their own game.

Let the players vote on it then. Let's see if more think it should go live? Do you really want to bet that there are more who wouldn't want this to go live? I don't think so. This is a great change, and it's about time some of the other professions got a taste of what biochem has been going through. Yes I'm saying this and my main is artifice. Want a screenshot of it?

Mostly I felt that way because I just hadn't had a good team. I played tonight with a friend, and it was great. He would run the ball and I would do just that. If one of them got on him I would freeze them, taunt, or use my harpoon. Score ended 3 our side 0 theirs. It was so much more fun. Voidstar is pretty great too. In all I never expected to have this much fun pvping with a vanguard.

So yeah, I love it. I have always loved their pve, but I actually made an empire guy so mad he signed over to a republic to rage at me. Lol poor slartibartfast, so so angry. That was great. Sure they may not be that great in hb, just my opinion, but I plan to level this one up in pvp now as much as possible. I can do nice damage, the harpoon is great. The guy I made rage said something like "you run like a little girl" because the guy would chase me around trying to kill me. I love to taunt+shield. Kind of sad that the guy wants to report me for a name violation because of having TStark but whatever. Never managed to make someone that mad in pvp in swtor. So now for the point of my post, are there any tips other vanguard/not sure the bh equivalent could share with me. I usually get 20k+ protection, I use my interrupt harpoon etc. Just looking for any cool tips people might want to share with me so I can get better. btw my spec is right now mostly defense with some assault/tactics thrown in. It's not set, and I assume there is a good spec for it already out there.

I agree with most of everything you said. Consider though why people are leaving? If it's like you said and they are just leaving because of a lower score, how did that happen to begin with. Your post seems entirely based around HB, the one wz I wish I couldn't queue into. In CW you have people just charging head first into middle, ignoring the outside cannons. In voidstar you have teams that want to run up to the enemy spawn and fight while ignoring doors. Is it really fair to say that others should be punished because the team they get put with refuses to learn how to play? They could probably fix the entire problem by adding a surrender option. If 3/4 or even 1/2 of your team surrenders, it's over. Game stops and you can all queue again. That should solve your problem of having an imbalance. What it won't do is force those people to continue in a match that is already over. I seriously doubt anyone that is for penalties would agree to that. Reason is simply that maybe you don't care about being carried, but they do.

Let me explain it to you very simpley. They want to get carried. When they see people that could carry them leave, they want to punish them for doing it. Their thought process is "hey I should be able to get carried, they should be punished for not making this easy for me." I can promise people that if they played better, they would have fewer people leaving. Instead they want to punish others because they can't figure out what to do.

For me creating augment ls is the main reason I switched from biochem on my main. I want to be able to craft as many of those as possible. The price is crazy right now, I can only imagine how great it will be with 1.2

Some people (me being one of them) make most of our money off stuff under level 50. I can sell one thing at level 50 and make 75k+ credits, but that usually takes a day or two. Meanwhile I'm selling out on stuff under 50 for 15 to 20k each. In the time it takes to sell something that is level 50 I can usually sell 4 to 6 of the stuff under 50. I simply make more money off of it. The mats are also much easier to come by. If you don't believe me, make 4 blue/purple earpieces, implants, or armor mods. Now make 4 level 50 ones. Go list them all and see how fast the 4 under 50 sell. Don't mess it up either making some silly version of the under 50s that no one will buy. Though I agree completely that 1.2 will offer almost nothing for cybertech. For synthweaving/armormech it's going to be very nice. With crit rates already not very high there will not be that much competition for oranges with a crit slot. Meaning that they will sell incredibly well the first few weeks.

I can't speak for the grenades, as I never really use them. As for the armoring while leveling you will always be ahead of the commendations for whatever planet you are on. At least below 49. Every time I've went to the commendation vendor for a planet by the time I had enough commendations to purchase the armor one I've already made better. Also I have found I have far better choices because the commendation vendors are really limited. I just make new blues every few levels and I'm set. The biggest problem I've run into is that my crafting outdates the planets I'm on. The added benefit of crafting my own ear pieces (purples with an augment slot), and ship parts which aren't used as much because when I was leveling if I did any of the ship missions I would just get way ahead of the level range for the planet I was on. Using blues though I could always keep my dmg mitigation higher than commendations could. I also found that there are so many medpacs you will burn through the level range of them before you use it all. I still have 30 of the level 42 or so medpacs around, and close to that many of the level 46 (? can't remember the exact level). I never ran out. The only thing you might miss is the reusable stims, but considering you can get blues that last for 2 hours and work through death that really isn't a big issue. In return I saved a ton of commendations. Figure 5 pieces of armor, 7 commendations per armor mod = 35 commendations on just that now 5 pieces of armor 2 commendations per mod = 10 saved You end up saving roughly 45 commendations per planet, if you try to keep yours up to date. That's almost 2 of the 24 commendation prototype purple boxes you can buy. I have an orange head,chest,legs,boots,gloves,belt,bracers,ls so I save quite a bit of the commendations from all of that. The only ones you can't make are the hilt/barrel/enhancement/crystal. The enhancements are only 2 each, and on the higher planets you have a pretty good selection anyway. The crystals are updated pretty rarely to begin with. So you are really only comparing all of that to stim prices, because as I pointed out before medpacs drop really frequently. Biochem isn't all it's cracked up to be. Yes I have biochem 400 on one guy as an implant slave, but my characters that I level have all switched to other stuff. I get more stat increases from my purple shield than I would from a stim to begin with, and I don't have to shell out the 75k+ for buying a new one every 5 or so levels. Then there is the fact that you can make far more money with cybertech than you can with biochem. Try listing your blue armor mods sometimes. I list in bulk with my guy, I set my crew to make them when I log off. When I log on I go list. It's very rare that I haven't sold every single one of them before I can restock. Also toss in your ear pieces. It may not sound right but I sell so many of the redoubt versions. People grab them up like crazy. I love posting a bunch and then as I'm walking away I get the "you have mail". Even better is when you hear that sound from it a few times in a row because someone is leveling and wants to deck out their orange gear. Just my opinion though.

People are crazy for not buying them now when they are cheap. With 1.2 if they aren't bop they are going to skyrocket in price. You will be able to take from purples and put into your custom ls, but it will have an augment slot. Augments are getting a boost also.

as to how they could improve guardian my first suggestion is to remove the silly lower focus production from tanking stance. No other tank has lower resources just for being a tank, and both of the others (trooper/shadow) get an increase in one form or another. That would be a good start. Notice that in neither of my posts did I say boost their damage, I don't think anyone really expects that. Generally though changes should be made with consideration that 1) it's a melee tank and it seems every single mob not classified as weak has a knockback/slow. I know that's an exaggeration but I'm so damn tired of getting bounced around like a pinball while trying to stay in melee just to keep threat. 2)the class as a whole has some serious issues with damage mitigation lacking any of the increased armor talents that both other tanking classes get. This is compounded by the fact that our tanking tree seems to have been spread randomly over 3 different trees. 3) the devs also need to take into account a few of our abilities that don't even work on mobs we would be most interested in holding threat on. Just my opinion though, it's fine if anyone disagrees.

Not to say you are wrong about your experiences, but I to have played all of the classes. I played BH almost exclusively in the beta when I could. Once the game went live my first character was a jk, followed by a trooper,sage, another jk, inquisitor, and another bh. In that order if I recall correctly. By far the hardest story line has been the jk. Now at one time I thought this was just the missions, but after playing the other classes I can tell you that no it wasn't the story line. When I play my jk more often then night I spend the entire time looking down. I don't really get to actually "see" much of any fight. That is pretty sad when you consider some of the great art that went into the game. Then there is the ease of use. With other classes things feel much more intuitive. The specs are pretty well defined. With jk I feel the opposite is true. The specs seem almost random at time. As if someone meant to put together a great spec, and then someone come along and messed up where stuff was supposed to be. Just look at the tanking talents in the dps tree for an easy example. The one thing I wanted to do was tank, but again I'm more dps than tank. When I play trooper, or shadow I can look into their tanking tree and see where stuff makes sense. Sure each has it's own strengths, but when it comes to jk they have single target melee tanking. With either of the other two I'm just as capable single target, but nothing can touch me with multi target. With my vanguard the ease of movement for avoiding aoes while still being able to hold agro is great. With my trooper I can clear stuff so easily, and without having to have that damn woman that annoys me with her "leFtenant". I just don't really need her. With my shadow I can do just as well with a healer as without. Though it's not nearly as easy as with my trooper. By easy I am basing this off killing champion mobs at least my level to a few levels higher. I will admit I haven't played sent/mara very high. I started one though, and only have him in the 20s. To be honest though he feels far better at survival than my guardians do by far (yes, I have two one for light one for dark what can I say I love the story line that much). I know the post was long, but as you wrote what I consider a very good post I thought I would take the time to explain my point of view.

Shadow gets several pairs of pants too, sure not the best but still at least orange ones you can use for awhile =P To the OP, anyone that has both will agree with you. I will warn you now, don't try vanguard. It's even better than shadow. Shadow can be fun, but man at times it feels way to easy.

You are doing the exact same thing in your post. crying about changes that may or may not take effect. QQ less baby.

Yes just look at what happened to the other two "profs to have" first slicing, then biochem. I don't see them replacing one must have with another. No one knows at this point so maybe it will all work out.

He probably picked it thinking about getting a heal every so often. I don't think he counted on how little that heal would actually help though. to the OP: at 25000 health, that heal will only do 2500 health. That won't help much at all. I know it seems like it might. Just ask any level 40+ guardian though. Your job as a tank is to 1) keep threat, 2) stay alive 3)Positioning, knowledge of the encounter, and all the rest comes after those three. If you can pull off the first three your group will survive. Either a full def 10 in vig, or what I prefer 14/27 build. Also look into how defense, and shield work. They protect from much less damage than you might think they do.

It is smart if you want people to participate in end game pve. Either they do it and get their mats, or they don't and they complain. By making them sellable you make it so that people who play the market can now do just that and never have to do any of the end game pve content. Which robs those who do that content a valuable part of the market. Right now the people that do end game pve get special rewards for putting in the effort. Those that don't shouldn't have access to it.

I love this kind of thing, and it does work similar in real world markets. What the other guy (the guy selling for 12k) should do is bait out a large posting. Say the OP gets aggravated, eventually they will list a bunch of their items for say 6 to 9k. Then if I were him I would list several at 5k. You take a 7k loss roughly, but by now he should have built up enough of a stockpile to get it going. It's even easier if he has a partner involved. You ruin the market for potential sales, by going lower. Even cutting into your own private funding. The up side is that over time the single person will not be able to keep up. They will have to lower their prices, but as a partnership you should be able to keep this going for longer than the single person has resources. Continue this until you notice at least 4 days without the other person posting. Now for the fun part, raise prices quickly. Start selling them for 15k each, because there is no competition. Still if you want to really attack someone you can't stop at forcing them out of the market for one item. You need to target everything they sell. Use your new profits to undercut everything they sell. Continue until they have learned their lesson, that is to stay out of the market period. If they don't, continue undercutting till they stop listing. A few weeks of them getting returns from the gtn is usually enough to run someone out of the market. Now that is assuming that you have the required funds, items, and mats available to you to do this. It's actually easier to do on lower level items, because there just aren't that many new people anymore. The guy should have never told the OP to begin with, no reason to show your hand at all. He should have just talked with his partner, and started the undercutting. They could have run them out of the market without letting anyone know, then fixed the price. The problem in an mmo is that everyone will have access to recipes in the end, so it's a losing battle. Personally I can't help but wonder how easy it would be to ruin the market for multiple items. I know I've done this itnentionally as an experiment on resuables for bio. Selling price 50k I listed a bunch at 10 just to drive the other person out of the market. It cost more than that to make them usually, but it's fun seeing them completely disappear. Now I can list mine for whatever. They have an indefinite shelf life, and if anyone posts against me I can just undercut them again till they are out of it also. In the mean time I make plenty of money now so that they will have no alternative. They can either take a big hit in price trying to compete and pit their personal savings against mine, OR they will move on to something else.

While I won't argue that it is some direct reflection, I will say that it is a good indicator. Every game has a very vocal minority, but when that minority goes quiet more often than not the silent majority has already started fading out. Still the real problem was that people would post about issues, and get told "hey if you can't suck and swallow what bw feeds then ****". Well, many of them did. Now we have daily posts about server merges. I feel like I'm living through the first months of RIFT all over again. At first it was all "if you don't like it, go back to WoW scrub", then people feared server merges, then they actually happened population just kept declining. Game is still alive, but it's already dead. It will never grow, it's stable but that's it. If the same happens to sw I fear at what size it will stabilize at because on the republic side many servers already feel empty.

I think most of them simply quit. No one really thought anyone would quit. The big thing was anyone that had a complaint just reply to them "so leave", well they did. Now we have posts asking for server merges. Out of the group of people I started with, I'm the last one that still plays with any regularity, and the other two only because they have prepaid time. So maybe some are rationalizing, but the majority of them really did quit. I think March will be an extremely bad month, especially if they don't get the big increase in numbers they have anticipated.

If I recall correctly the one this is from is not repeatable. I think it comes from the second phase of the Bonus Series. You goto morain outpost (something like that) complete a quest for two people, then you return to wix. That is the point where you get the chest piece. Again if I remember correctly. I'm fairly sure that I'm at least very close.

Do people really care enough about pvp to complain here? I've seen some, but don't they get that pvp is a mini game at best for SW. I guess all anyone can do is count down till they leave so the rest of us can enjoy the forums without the constant "qq nerf x class they beat me" that the majority of pvpers post.