The Cathar (cat people) are reportedly the first new race being added. When the other servers die enough the hardware if needed will be re-tasked to the higher population servers and you will get the best of both worlds. In theory.

Couldn't agree more. There is no reason to take player's first choice away just because someone else beat them to it, no reason whatsoever that legacy names need to be unique.

The 1000 credit fleet pass should be considered a bonus perk, not a virtual requirement or baseline as suggested by one dev a few months ago. As for the group finder, while I do agree cross server would be the best way to reduce form up time (simply by virtue of having a far larger player base to choose from), I also understand their concerns that people need motivation to not to miscreants when they have the added anonymity of being on a different server. Anybody have any ideas on how to address that? I am inclined to think that for every person who does that, there will be more who play graciously, but then, I have been known to overestimate the maturity of the masses. If I am right however it would be another case where the good outweighs the bad but we are still being denied the good because of the minority of bad. Making travel less laborious would not break my immersion, in fact it would let me get to the fun parts with less hassle which would actually help it. Shouldn't the option be there for those who want it? When I think of Star Wars, loading screens and hoofing it across orbital stations does not come to mind, or it shouldn't..

Any plans to expand the use of the legacy tag to most if not all random loot drops? The legacy tag helps ensure the PLAYER that earned it can use it where it suits them instead of like myself having BoP schematics and rakata gear sitting in my bank rotting when I could use it on other characters. Millions of items went to waste in eq2 until the heirloom tag was utilized for general loot. Having random loot BoP can waste loot drops if the dice are against the players. Using the legacy tag would significantly reduce item waste while signature quest rewards could remain BoP. If the player earned it, what does it matter what character it is used on?

Making all custom gear adaptable was such a reasonable extrapolation I actually assumed they were talking about all custom gear. It made that much sense, my bad. Also agree totally with the op. Again I assumed (very rightfully) that the set bonus changes were applying to all armour mods so I went and dumped my atrocious rakata helm thinking I could maintain the set bonus and lost it of course.

That would be appreciated. It doesn't add anything to this game by making travel laborious like they seem to have a fetish for. At least once you get that one down a speeder point does open up. If they moved the speeder point and activation to just prior to the tanks you would only have to cross the open area where the tanks are themselves, in addition to the run you have to make through the caves with no speeder of course.

The crafting materials system is just plain horrible. I too have a ton of fabrics that I can't sell and not enough underworld metals. In addition to what you mention there is also the issue with the twin premium (green) materials needed for each tier (apart from grade 3 and 6). For scavenging for example, there are two metals and two compounds of each tier and no way to specifically harvest one at the expense of the other which invariably leads to people having far too much of one and not enough of the other. Combined with the general inefficiency of harvesting both from world drops (few efficient farming locations and low drops per mob) and from running missions (expensive and again low return rate), it all compounds into creating a system which is just plain bad. It is generally considered that crafting here is more expensive than it is worth with people easily able to obtain comparable gear through other means. Addressing these multiple problems raised by you and I would go some way to fixing that.

gah. Disregard. I'm so good I hit the quote button instead of the edit.

10 attempts isn't even close to a large enough sample to judge the percentage. I see a lot of people trying to second guess random systems with far, FAR less than needed to get an accurate assessment. I have been charting my RE success rate over the last few days, so far I have 133 attempts and currently I am at a 20.9% success rate. Even at 133 samples I wouldn't consider it a large enough pool of results and I wouldn't even be posting it yet but to demonstrate my point here. As a side note, until I hit over 50 results and the results started to normalize I was sitting under 12%. Keep at it, at times I have gone through 20 recipes without getting a success. It gets very expensive when you finally win that roll only to have it affix a bad stat. To get an earpiece I could use in operations on my Marauder it cost me over 600k and 3 successful attempts until I got one that was good. Which is another big problem, I completely agree with you that drop rate from mobs and missions of crafting mats is far to inneficient.

The random prefix system is just plain bad. I have lost count the amount of times I have spent tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of credits to finally get a successful RE only to have tack on a completely useless stat. Shield rating for my Marauder or Sniper and presence for items intended for hm and op play are two of the worst offenders. I don't know if being able to choose would be a good idea, but it has to be better than it is. Right now my schematic book is filling up with useless recipes, and yes there is a strict limit.

I am aware of all of the counters you mention and do use them actually. The point was all of those are factors that effect melee dps that do not effect (or effect to a lesser extent) ranged. Please note I actually think the immobility of a sniper does to an extent balance it against melee. Mercs for example however get the best of both worlds.

disregard.

I'll second that. It was one of the things I was hoping for the most with the 1.2 ui changes. As it is I am forced into sub optimal layouts.

If the fleet had a pvp vendor that sold all of the items then this would never have been an issue. So we are going to need to collect and store yet more resources? Why not use some of the ton of different materials we already have?

Agree on the horrible suffix items. I have many sets of armour stashed in my bank too, this includes crafted ones that I won't use because the stats. Having appearance slots would free me up to change my appearance at will without effecting my stats which as I raid I can't compromise on at the moment. It isn't even really an option to use un-augmented custom. Yes this would free all those loot drops to compete for appearance but it also frees up every crafted item to do the same. Would you mind linking the quote about 'gear skins'? How does it cost mechanics? What mechanics? You still need all mechanics as your 'stat' gear. Appearance slots only add the choice to obtain multiple new sets merely for a change in appearance. These are all sets in addition to what players currently have. Yes it opens up all those loot drops, 'as stated above' but all the crafted items that may have been disregarded because of it's stats or because of it's appearance are also made equally valid options. The custom gear still has many unique (textures if not models). Any shift would not move from custom to loot exclusively, it would also move to all of your crafted pieces. If there is a drop in custom demand at all it would be swallowed by the combination of demand for the other crafted items and for the fact that people will get multiple MORE sets, over and beyond the one stat/appearance compromise they currently have. The custom system isn't achieving it. It gives you some measure of choice yes but your still limited to those custom looks, and choosing to apply or not, a texture defined by an often questionable match to the chest. That is a very real reason, suffice to say, I am going to ignore your attempt to belittle my reasoning.

I have cleared Denova, KP and EV and no fight I know of requires near constant movement. Regular movement yes, but not even close to 'near constant'. Zorn and Toth for example do require periods of constant moving but overall it is still nowhere near constant. I should also point out that as melee have to move at the same time, they don't get to dps either as staying in melee range would get them skewered from below. Nearly every ability those bosses have though has some kind of range limit, a great deal of which are short range, ie far enough to hit melee but not ranged. Toth's dot for example in EM, and his leap to hit Zorn. The swipe from the rancor in KP, Karagga's flame fart, the twin Bounty Hunter's (can't remmeber the name) flamethrower move. Don't get me wrong, I don't really agree with the OP but Sniper's are not so hard up as you seem to think. (I play both a Sniper and Marauder btw).

You said it yourself; The only real way it could be 'wrong' would be if it contradicted a higher tier of canon, ie the films*, or if it was disavowed for whatever reason on the authority of the liscence holder. *Lucasfilm policy actually has several tiers of canon and this game is not near the top of the pile by any means.

Rumour has it that the UT3 engine has been sourced for a space game by Lucasarts. Unsure what if any effect this will have on Bioware's game. That infinity one looks pretty good though to me the most impressive thing was the scale.

Just responding to that one point. Appearance tabs also open up a second set of gear people can wear at any one time. It also opens up the possibility of people collecting multiple sets for different looks. It also frees up people to select different and more armour that they may have liked the appearance of but declined to obtain because of the stats. This includes recipes for items you make. In all those cases appearance slots are creating more demand for more items. It also livens the market for those loot drops. That being said I do see where you are coming from and I think consideration should be shown to crafters, giving them the lions share of appearance options to craft. This is another way appearance slots are good because crafters can compete for appearance instead of competing with the stats of raid and operations gear.

There is a reason firearms replaced swords and pikes as primary arms. Ranged has a lot of inherent advantages that poor encounter design just compound. Very few games balance ranged and melee. Currently EQ2 is horrible biased against melee with around 60+% of current raid encounters disadvantaging scouts and to a slightly lesser extent, other melee more so than to ranged casters. I am sorry to say I raged a bit today in raid after finding yet another encounter that fit that mold. That being said, I don't find this game nearly as bad as EQ2, but there are already multiple fights that (not my words, these come from ranged guild mates) "sucks for melee". I agree something should be done, it has been my experience in pvp the disparity is even worse. I haven't pvp'ed for a while though so I am unsure how my Marauder will stack up with the buffs they have received. Of course any change has to be considered very carefully and each class considered seperatly. I am not sure your squishier in general idea will do that. One thing I fancy is more freedom in target facing for melee. A good swordsmen does have a limited ability to hit almost directly behind and this is without the advantage of the Force. Currently, for arguments sake lets say you can only attack in a frontal 180 degrees. One of the biggest disadvantages melee has is that at close range is terribly easy to get outside of that arc. Against a ranged attack 20 metres away it is impossible to do that without other factors. Opening up melee's attack arc to 270 degrees (which isn't as silly as it sounds as I tried to show above) would counteract the disparity to an extent. Unfortunately I doubt this thread will survive without some seriously biased input from both sides but other than that, I look forward to any discussion. edit: For the record I have a Marauder, Merc, Sniper, Assassin, Vanguard, Smuggler and a Sage to hopefully put some perspective on what I am saying.

I have the question the statement about monotone outfits being 'eyesores' It might seem trivial but really it is a sign of something I have been feeling for a long time. A vaste swathe of the armour in this game looks horrible. I would rather go outside in a potato sack than some of the stuff in this game. It is bad enough, it is systemic enough that I question the fashion sense of the developers (In a hopefully respectful and constructive way) and that comment about monotone outfits really reinforces my opinion. While monotone outfits are just as capable of being eyesores as multicoloured sets, it isn't even close to being inherent. Infact many fashionable outfits are monotone, take any one dress which is designed to be 90% of an outfit. Very few of them have more than one colour on it. Of every fashion eyesore I can recall, while some of them were monotone, not one was an eyesore because it was monotone. Actually, sometimes they were eyesores precisely because of the opposite. In short I think while the comment was probably somewhat off hand, I do believe it is more evidence that there is a fundamental problem with the fashion sense of many of the artists which is a problem when you are designing stuff you expect players to display. I would suggest these artists either run their concepts by others (gf/wife/etc), or bone up on fashion design because while many players are happy for their characters to wear whatever, there are a lot of people who are very unsatisfied with how their toon looks.

Unfortunately a dye system would make a ton of armour somewhat redundant because most of it is simply retextured different coloured variants. Still, I don't think that is a worthy reason to not impliment a dye system as the negatives won't really effect players at all. In the end it would only mean some wasted dev time. The positives on the other hand are people being far more satisfied with how their character looks which can contribute signficantly to making a person feel attached. They should just bite the bullet. As a side note this would have been always been a better system than the match to chest item they have now. For any one piece of armour the current system has to have a library of different textures which are linked and pre chosen depending on your chest piece. It would have been just as easy an far more statisfying if those links were not made, and we had the choice of which of those textures to apply rather than essentially having a developer assign us our choice*. Please note that this proposed change requires little to no change in art, only a change in how those textures are chosen. *This is especially bad because so much of the armour in this game is so horrible that there appears to be a fundamental lack of fashion sense among the developers. Like the comment in the recent Q&A defending the system calling a monotone outfit an eyesore. While they are capable of being eyesores, it isn't even close to being inherent. For example take a dress which is designed to be like 90% of an outfit, how many of them are NOT monotone? Of all the fashion eyesores I can recall not one of them was an eyesore because it was monotone, infact quite often the reverse is true.

Personally I am very happy with my server but I do appreciate an urgent need to impliment transfers. Playing on a low population server can make it extremely difficult to get a group and therefor do a huge chunk of the content. This isn't something trivial, this is rightfully a deal breaker for a lot of people and it is losing them subs every day. It can not be emphasized enough how valid that position is and I can not blame anyone if they decide to cancel because of it.

I was with you until that last one. Please no, that would massively restrict you choice in appearance end game for no good reason. Who cares if the shell of your best item was crafted at level 10, to be that best it needs end game mods x4 inc an augment slot. The fact that the appearance was a low level combine means nothing and ultimately, that is all custom gear is is an appearance. Almost all of the stats come from the mods the only exception being the light/medium/heavy mitigation modifier. I think people are so hung up on the idea of a 'low' level item being good enough for end game. I don't get it, because to be comparable in stats it needs all end game mods anyway. Think of it as building an item up by components and the custom shell is merely the glue which holds it together. Does it matter that one part of the combine is a low level recipe? I reiterate, it still needs end game content in the form of mods to be comparable to any other end game piece.

I have to ask why was that choice so obvious? Solo was a smuggler who had a Wookie companion, should all smugglers have a Wookie? Are we trying to emulate that story and relationship? Is that why the smuggler ship is so obviously inspired by the Falcon. I think that is one of the problems with this game, that it is trying TOO hard to be the original trilogy. The Sith Empire is apart from the Sith themselves, exactly like the Galactic Empire, oh wait, they wear their rank badges vertical instead of horizontal, that makes them totally different... TIE fighters, Star Destroyers, they are all there with minor aesthetic differences. The Republic is even worse. Of course there should be some similarities, of course there should be a lot but this game goes beyond trying to be inspired by a deep, rich and characterful galaxy into emulating what should just be one story (though I admit probably THE biggest story).