f13.net

There's a trailer floating around now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwAoHhV2dt8&noredirect=1

Figured this could use its own topic. I am very pleased with this, other than the potential button real estate issues that legacy powers imply.

Looks great.  Maybe some balancing concerns with the legacy abilities in addition to being out of buttons already.  Also, they're not messing around with just the "side" races for legacy unlocks.  Chiss Smugglers and Pureblood Jedi, love it.

Hopefully there's good stuff on the lower end of the level range.

Can we get a text summary, please?  I don't want to have to wait seven hours to watch this.

In short: Miracle patch.  :grin:

That patch is looking pretty damn awesome.   :awesome_for_real:

Oh, holy shit.

Best I could scrounge up....

Because I care THAT MUCH:

First section is new instances/BGs:

- New warzone with a little bit of footage (Novare Coast)
- New Op with a little bit of footage (Explosive Conflict). Fight an AT-ST looking thing.
- New Flashpoint with a little bit of footage (The Lost Island), seems to be continuing the rakghoul story from 1.1

Second section is Legacy stuff:

- Legacy family tree interface shown briefly, appear to be 5ish different relationships you can set?
- Legacy abilities - shows a Sith Warrior using flamethrower, and a Smuggler using force choke (not on Corso despite the fact that he's standing right there)
- Legacy unlocks - shows a mailbox in someone's ship, and what appears to be a training dummy
- Legacy species unlocks - shows what appears to be a pureblood Sith Jedi Knight, and a Chiss smuggler

Third section is "Advanced Options":

- Shows the UI customization interface, it appears to be much like the way you move around elements in LotRO
- Improved character textures - shows a side by side of old textures and new textures, it is hard to tell much because the trailer I found so far is not high res itself
- Appearance customization - shows the interface for the color matching, looks pretty straightforward, shows a trooper making everything orange
- Mission tracker usables - like in WoW, you don't have to go into your inventory page to click mission items anymore

Fourth section is "Additional Features":

- Warzone ranking (shows that you can queue for ranked or regular)
- Dailies being added on Corellia
- New Mini Pets (shows what seems to be a baby tauntaun)
- Guild Banks (shows... a guild bank, and what looks like an interface to decide what types of items are allowed on pages possibly)
- New Gear (shows some new outfits, including what appears to be an inquisitor wearing pants)

Then a bunch of other short text things flashes on the screen:

- New vehicles
- Craftable augments
- New crafting schematics
- extractable Tier 2 mods
- new lightsaber colors
- ship droids gain affection
- legacy item drops
- new roleplay emotes

AND CUT TO LOGO.

From this article.  (http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1219843p1.html)


YAY!  Melee love is also badly needed.

I'm interested in seeing the details pertaining to the legacy system before I get too excited.  I wonder what Legacy level 30 will get me? 

Can I be a cynic and hope that they fix the bugs in the existing elements too?  Foundry and False Emperor Hard modes bugged on us again last night.  Not fun. 

I am happy to see appearance stuff, UI customization, the ability to queue for a specific warzone, a new warzone/Hard mode, and class tweaks.  It may keep me around... I was losing hope now that guildies have mass migrated to ME3. 

Oh god, the last thing I need is new abilities.

I want two more bottom-center hotbars.  That would make me giddy.

Nebu's article has some clarifications on Legacy stuff, worth reading:

- Race unlocks are either by paying with in-game currency, or by hitting 50 with a given race.
- The legacy extra powers are tied to your moment of glory ability (the one that requires a companion out) so you can't use them in warzones, etc.

I'm liking that patch a lot and echo the sentiment that there better be a section listed with fixes to known bugs.  We didn't get half our loot on a hard mode kill this weekend because it was on master looter.  16 very unhappy people and 10 closed tickets (working as intended, piss off!) /grumble

Fake edit:  Who crafts the augements?

Being able to roll a Sith Pureblood Smuggler will fix this.   I routinely use the "Punish" racial on my minions and it hasn't lost it's amusement value yet.  Sure, I unlocked Vettes' shock collar but I can still smack a twilek.

ed: Oh, also the texture thing is obvious if you look at the helms.  The dull grey smudge on the left turns into some nice paint chipping on the right.

The only thing I didn't like from that article is the switch to same faction Voidstar matches.  I really liked the way they had framed the warzones in the context of the Empire/Republic conflict but now we're going to have Republic fighting Republic on Voidstar (and eventually Alderaan, too).  That just makes no sense and breaks my precious immersion!  :oh_i_see:

What would be kind of cool is if they just made whoever you were fighting against look like their faction mirrors to you. That might be technically unfeasible I guess.

I like how the "unlock your race for use with other classes" option does absolutely nothing for a level 50 Human and next to nothing for a level 50 Zabrak.

I love you.  :heart:



Also I will seriously do ANYTHING THEY ASK OF ME to get that baby tauntaun pet.

Jesus, dude. I thought I was doing pretty good at legacy 10.
The idea of a Sith pureblood JK probably makes Daniel Erikson's head explode.
It's a wedding present after you marry Corso Riggs.

I'LL DO IT

THAT is how badly I want that fucking thing. SO CUTE. I can just arrange for Corso to have a little accident after the wedding. I bet Guss knows a guy.


EDIT: Also I am getting pretty close to Legacy 30 myself. Nebu and I have problems.  :why_so_serious:

The game still needs a LFD feature.

While I'd have been against it if they'd bothered to ask me ( :why_so_serious: ), I can deal with a Pureblood JK.  I could even appreciate the humor if someone made one and named him Drizzt.  Individuals who go against the nature of their race is a staple of sci fi/fantasy.

What I can't wrap my head around is the rational behind Rep vs Rep Voidstars and Alderaans.  It almost makes sense for hot Imp on Imp action since everyone always talks about how the Empire always ends up fighting itself, but what's the excuse on the Republic side?

Separatists.  It's always separatists! 

I still want a baby Bantha pet. Blizz could ride on it.  :why_so_serious:

Reading Outbound Flight right now and the Neimoidian vicelord keeps making me chuckle because I hear the voice they used in the prequels when he speaks.

Thrawn is voiced by the IA's VA in my head.

That would ALSO be adorable, and I would marry Corso for one of those TOO.

Well, it's not like the game forced you to roll a boring human  :awesome_for_real:

Patch sounds awesome. In particular the UI customization, color matching, and high res textures will all be very welcome. Release this patch right after I finish ME3, okay Bioware?

Hell, release it before I'm done with ME3, and do a hotfix of whatever isn't working quite right before I'm done with ME3!  :why_so_serious:

(Haha, just kidding, I will be done with ME3 by Friday, probably.)

I have to agree with Draegan.  As awesome as this kitchen sink patch sounds, and it is, this feature is pretty much where I have the line drawn between TOR and WoW.

Friday? Doubting yourself this early?

By "done" I mean "did a run through on MANSHEP and LadyShep."

Maybe we could save some space by simply working out who you won't marry for a tauntaun.   :awesome_for_real:

I'm pretty sure there isn't anyone she wouldn't marry for a tauntaun.  Including C2, General Garza and the Emperor.  :why_so_serious:

Corso is akin to "last man on Earth."

Not to everyone!

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=103602

As they say: This.

I fucking hate Corso Riggs so fucking much.

Despite his flaws, "now you're dumb, ugly, AND dead" still makes me smirk.   :grin:

Indeed.

hissssssssssssssssssssssssssss


If my gunslinger wasn't capped on her armstech, I'd consider rerolling her just to remind myself wtf was going on in her ~ROMANCE~ with Corso (she's paused while I wait for Ingmar's trooper to catch up to her, because I fucking SUCK at soloing on a gunslinger). I'm sure it was nothing good.

If you make it to 50 with a Human you will get a Presence buff and with Cyborgs you will unlock the other Cyborg character customization options.

Beating Chapter 2 with a class will give you a class specific emote and unlock their buff for other classes.

You'll get sprint at level 1  :yahoo:

Teeny bit sad my trooper is already level 47, I would've liked to make him a dude twi'lek instead DEEP DOWN. But then he couldn't have his silly, silly, silly facial hair. So I guess it works out.

Does /follow work yet?

Fixing their shitty UI and the terrible textures was mostly the extent of my demands, so once the patch comes out (and the legion of inevitable bugs is under control) I'll resub.

The ability to follow or the actual slash command?

I can right click people and select follow from a menu and I just merrily tag along... but I've never actually tried typing out /follow come to think of it.

Yup sigh first level 50 human trooper sheesh had I known that I would have picked some other race oh well.

Source/pics or it didn't happen.

Watching http://www.swtor.com/guildsummit and they announced it.

Sprint at level 1 and a short speed burst (jetback/rocketboots) at a later level.

/follow works pretty well now, yes.  Uses the same logic as companions on follow from what my friend and I have seen.  That does mean that it fails pretty badly at elevators though.

Trippy is probably trying to multibox.

Yup, thanks, maybe I'll give it a try again soon.

There is some good shit here.

Still want sidekicking.


Jesus fucking christ.

Yeah, 30 is up there. I am sitting at 16 and I thought I was pretty fucking far. Then again, I haven't logged in for more than an hour in the last few days.

Anyone ahead of me is crazy and anyone behind me is slacking.

I wonder if I can trick Sjofn into getting me legacy levels by convincing her that entering a secret code gets her several more character slots...

I'm at 29 with 2 50's but they are both battlemasters as well.  This one guy I know has to be at least 33-34 cuz he has like 4 50's and 2 40's.

They could say its a training exercise.

The empire need no reason to shoot each other.

The republic are idiots and probably started shooting each other accidentally as they are unable to see clearly on account of needing a haircut. Goddamn hippies.

There, I fixed your immersion, no need to thank me.

Yeah as long as they don't just play the same old intro it won't be bad.

If EA wanted to get really tricksy about it, they could display the opposing team as being the mirror classes from the other faction and short of inspecting name tags you'd never know.

So two opposing guardians would appear as juggernaughts to each other etc.

I wonder if their customer service gets any tools with this miracle patch of theirs.  I'm gonna apply the standard EVE procedure for patches, actually, and then check to see if they've fixed my pet peeve issues before reactivating.  Because there's plenty of time to get to all the stuff they're putting in.

For Sjofn, maybe they'll put that baby tauntaun (I don't think it's that, though, no horns) on top of one of the harder-to-get-to datacrons somewhere.  Maybe the Tatooine one.

I honestly wish I could get more character slots already, it's very sad.



I'd do it, but it would totally test my will to live. I currently ignore datacrons as hard as I can.  :grin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkxaF5Pq5D8

I also need more character slots. 8 more would be perfect. I just rolled up a second Sith Inq because I feel like playing an Assassin when I want to sneak past stuff.

yep

Lord Renning wil be pleased.

I must be getting old because I don't see how this patch is a 'miracle' patch. Whilst it adds a lot of extra fluff into the game, it doesn't address many of the reasons why people have been quitting at all. Level 50 play will still be tedious as hell. Dungeons will still not be run thanks to no LFD. Questing outside of class quests is still going to be terminally tedious.

Ultimately unless I'm missing something this is a layer of goodness being applied on top of the game without any real substantial changes to address the significant flaws people have been complaining about.

Group finder is scheduled for 1.3 - same server only.

Edit: Source (https://twitter.com/#!/SWTOR/status/176767274496163840)

So, just in time for GW2  :oh_i_see:

Twitter feed just announced dual spec in 1.2.  Huzzzah!

Dual Spec? Whoops, I shouldn't have spent the gigantic pile of tier tokens I collected after filling my Vanguard out on making Dorne the most overequipped companion ever.

Well then I'll be back from 1.2.  So freaking tired of being my companion's heal bitch.

WHO'S THE BITCH NOW, KALIYO?!   :drill:

When I say you can't please some people, this is what I'm talking about.

Can we all admit that it's hard to be excited about getting features that should have been present in the game at release?

Take you one further:  not only should these features have been present at release, but they should have spent the thus-available time since release fixing teh bugs!!!

Have to admit, this does seem like a very bad trend in MMOs lately to salvage retention numbers. Polish up the game enough to release it, but allow for the glaring holes. This way, the customer will be more likely to stick around once these holes start getting filled. Parse out the "filling" over time and you can maximize the people who stay sub'd to your game because they want to see the upcoming changes. Just the way things go these days I guess.  :oh_i_see:

Yeah, how's that system working for WAR? Game companies have been releasing half-assed products since the beginning of time, MMO's are just more susceptible because they feel they can fix things after the fact.

Of course, this almost never works but people keep seeing wow and thinking they can just do whatever blizzard did and it'll work. So, they just do close to the bare minimum, trying to duplicate wow with all the features it had at release. they say to themselves "well, wow had bugs and lack of features at release but people didn't care so we're good" but that's completely missing the point of course.

Same old argument, you aren't catering to the players of yesterday, you need to cater to tomorrow's players.

He's right though. Nothing they do now can fix the game for me. They burned that bridge and pissed me off with all the stupidity on the front end. Even fixing the stupidity isn't going to make me likely to forgive them for screwing me as a customer with a huge box cost and unfinished product.

Ditto.  I can't play a game like this without the "mental commitment" of wanting to play for a long time.  I know i will bail for GW2 already so there is no desire to play anymore, even thought this patch has almost everything i thought the game needed (minus macros, which is still a big one).

you guys just burned out. I'm sure I'll be in the same boat if I it was my only game, as it is I'm happily trucking along on 4 different characters, the highest being a 41 and find the legacy stuff exciting. They'll probably keep me on until Diablo.

Well I'm not burned out, by your definition, as I only have one character at 36 and a couple level 14 banking alts, and the 36 had a pretty decent story so far and it's giving hints it'll have a decent ending that I'm interested in seeing.  However, I do know exactly what they're talking about in the "it'll take more than just fixing my issue" department; I'm in the same boat.  I've quit over an issue with their customer support, they've pissed me off, and it'll take more than just fixing that issue for me to come back, and I don't even think they can deliver on "just fix the issue already."  Mine has been reported since game release, by a few people.

1.1.5 patch is out right now, and judging by their Customer Service sub-forum, the patcher may bug out and remove your entire SWTOR directory; first 2 pages are full of this issue.  Personally, I'm not going to patch today, let them fix this issue first.  It's beginning to look like CCP levels of competence.

I'm mostly just logging in to raid now since dailies are pointless to me. I hope the Legacy stuff regarding alts is retroactive because I kinda want to make an alt right now.

Update: they meant 1.2.x for dual spec.  I.E. no tthis patch but sometime before 1.3.

So what happened to "one planet per patch per month" anyway?

Same thing as Hero Classes

Can I have your stuff?

I'm guessing that 'planet' was supposed to be 'plant' and it was a typo.  Belsavis looks much greener than it did last month. 

Haha Anyone see the price on those White saber crystal?  2.5 mil

That's one spendy vendor!

But would you resub if they fired Ghostcrawler?

If SWTOR
- created world pvp that was engaging
- decreased the amount of cc
- added appearance tabs and housing
- fixed the flashpoint bugs
- balanced melee and range a bit better

I'd play this game for at least another 6 months.  Want another $90 Bioware?  Come and get it!

I love how the red and blue crystals look better than everything else in the game.

Not asking for much, are you  :grin:

I'd kill to be able to swap my black-red for a black-blue or even just plain green with the same stats.  At least I'm not stuck with it as a saber color :awesome_for_real:.

Kudos.  :awesome_for_real:

Been waiting 15 years + for someone to get it right.  They've had more resources to do it than anyone before them... and THEY BLEW IT!   :why_so_serious:

The product was not unfinished. You (this is more of a general you) just had unrealistc expectations of a new game having every single convenience feature and design element of a much older, more mature game.

Everyone has their pet feature they want in a game. If you add them all up the game wouldn't come out for another 3 years, and meanwhile some existing game would add some other new feature and then that would become a must-have. It is unwinnable.

LFD, moddable UI and end game content that works is 'every single convenience feature'. 

If you're going to accuse people of overreacting, you might want to check yourself as well.

You replied before I edited my reply into coherence!

The product was both unfinished and buggy.  Bioware knew this and lived with it to make a Christmas release.  Were you not in beta?

It was only unfinished in the sense that no MMO is ever "finished" until it shuts down.

You aren't this dumb.

I'm not going to argue the buggy part, although it has only slightly impacted me personally. I will point out that I've never seen a bug free game above the 'little indie game with 2 buttons' level.

But I'm going to dig my heels in on the unfinished thing. That's nothing but unrealistic expectations and entitlement. It is literally impossible for an MMO to come out that will make everyone happy with its exact feature set.

Have you played any MMO's released in the last 3 years?  There's a HUGE difference between 'satisfying everyone' and 'being feature complete enough to capture a significant marketshare'.  Take a look at what Rift had at release on a significantly smaller budget.  You'll see what people who know how to make an mmo will put into a game right out of the box (though they missed the boat on LFD as well).  Bioware made a single player/coop game with a large multiplayer lobby.  The lack of MMO-style features really demonstrates this.  

MMO gamers wanting common MMO features is not entitlement.  It's an expectation when you're buying an MMO, particularly in the WoW or post-WoW era.

Do you really think it was their call to make?
You mean the complete lack of creativity, setting and story?

And as you say, LFD was patched in later. As was appearance tabs. And some of the end game. And is the UI moddable yet? A slew of stuff...and yet they basically can't fix the blandness at the core of it. TOR at least has a great setting and interesting stuff to do (for casual players, I guess).

Rift had features that satisfied you. I found it bland to the point of near-unplayability and didn't last past the trial. Which one of us is the "real" audience that matters for these things?

EDIT: We don't actually know how many subscribers Rift has, right? And now I see that they didn't themselves have all these things at release, that people seem to expect SWTOR to have had at release?

I am largely disappointed in the species unlock system they've talked about so far.

In fact, disappointed is the wrong word. Incredulous would be more fitting. I really cannot see the logic behind it. Playing a species to 50 unlocks it for use in classes that species was previously unavailable for. Call me crazy but doesn't the average player seek an entirely new experience for their next character? More importantly, what happens when I get that character to 50?

Example: I roll a Chiss Imperial Agent. I hit level 50, and therefore unlock Chiss Smuggler etc. I roll a Chiss Smuggler. I hit level 50.... what now? Oh hai loop.


I'm aware it would be naive of me to believe they'd actually bother allowing us to play one of the dozens of other races already present in the game (ho ho ho, without some sort of monetary exchange? EA thinks not) but the system as they've described it currently is bafflingly obtuse. Here's hoping the species for credits unlock thing is at least affordable. As a Human Jedi Knight Sentinel player, I already feel like I've done everything wrong since starting the game.

The endgame wasn't ready. Gamebreaking bugs that were rampant in beta were rampant at release. Itemization had duplications that weren't exposed in QA. Systems in Ilum broke down.

You're being obtuse over semantics. It's not entitlement to expect that a month post-release you shouldn't be running into 5 mans and raids that may or may not be completable due to mechanical issues.

The Rift UI was customizable in a big way from Day 1: similar to what was shown in the SWTOR 1.2 video, just better (more action bars, sleeker, etc.). But yes, it also has full mod support now and has had it for 6+ months.

I'm in Ingmar's boat though. People saying the game was unfinished when it launched are crazy, or just have unrealistic expectations. SWTOR launched in pretty good shape and, short of LFD, they're patching in the features they need to at an acceptable pace. No MMO, to my knowledge, has ever launched with a good LFD system. It's a complex feature that is completely useless unless you implement it right. LFD wouldn't really fix the big problems with SWTOR end-game anyway, which are design problems.

I'm debating that key features should have been in at release.  Features that EVERY AAA budget MMO should have at release in the current market.  That has nothing to do with whether I like the game or not. 

Hell Ingmar, I'd wager that I play SWTOR more than nearly everyone here.  It's a good game.  I would have rather they spent their resources on mechanics and gameplay than voice acting and weak story.

I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that i need around 30-50 million to make my own damn game in order to get what i want.

Holy crap I just watched the trailer again and it has inquisitor pants in it.

If you played it a little less you wouldn't need those features so fast.  :wink:

I already told you like 4 times that you can spend credits to unlock races as well, so you don't have to get a particular race to 50.  They haven't said how much it'll cost yet, though.

I would be kind of surprised if it will be cheap enough that the first character someone is leveling could afford it before 50.

Technically they said "in game currency" rather than credits, which means it could be through commendations too.

The end-game is plenty ready.  I've run into just as many unmanageable bugs or inconsistencies in Heroic Dragon Soul as I have in Hard Eternity Vault/Karagga's Palace.  And now a few months later, they're both fine (just let South finish first).

Dude, SWTOR had it's setting, story and creativity handed to it in a pre-packaged mint condition blister pack with lucas stamped all over it.  Nothing about SWTOR is original beyond changing some names around in the setting.  For fuck's sake you have a smuggler with a wookie sidekick...seriously.  Now I know wow is no better in that dept, warcraft3 established it though both games did expand to some degree on established lore, the groundwork was done.

The problem with Rift was that they were trying to introduce a setting like wow without having first had their own warcraft.  I'm not sure the setting was terrible but it really needed more time in the incubation chamber first to refine it and turn it into something memorable.

SWTOR has no excuse when it comes to mechanics, the game was essentially written when it comes to storyline and most of the systems were just lifted wholesale from other games.  It's DIKU, there's not a lot of shit that's new.  Sure the voice acting was all a nice touch and I'm not sure how much development time it took to get ready but it couldn't have been much.

(http://i.imgur.com/wyTZA.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/3xX2X.gif)

(http://www.nexuszero.net/Img/FordelPick.jpg)

 :eat:




Is this how the game works?

Wrong sci-fi MMO with "Star" in the title. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=21809.0)

Nevermore has told you four times, but perhaps me also telling you will help: You can unlock races with credits.

But no, I don't think people think the different species are anything but cosmetic, rather than an "entirely new experience." So if they really like the Chiss, being able to roll their next class as a Chiss is awesome.

I think what he meant was, people generally diversify their races, go for something new, even if they really like a particular race.

At least from my observation.

Yes, I figured that's what he meant. But I don't think people generally do that.

Yeah, I tend to pick the races I like and play them exclusively.  In WoW that was night elves and draenei, except for classes that weren't available to those.  Or horde side, blood elves and orcs.  In SWTOR I have a lot of twi'leks, primarily because I goddamn hate hoods and I don't want to EVER have to deal with a hood-up so a lot of the reasoning for playing twi'lek is purely to avoid that.  Even without that, though, it's pretty much just Twi'lek, Chiss, Human that I have much of any interest in.  Theoretically I'm interested in playing a Sith Pureblood to see reactions, but I honestly expect that the dialogue differences, if any, are so incredibly minor as to be barely-noticeable.

Clearly it bears repeating so much I even noted it in my original post  :oh_i_see:

Bearing in mind that your guys are all meant to be related somehow, it kind of makes sense that you can make them all the same race.

Looks like a great patch.   Unfortunately it also seems like it will be coming out after D3.

Oh dear. :sad:

I really hoped that the quality of life issues in SWTOR wouldn't drive me away, but after going back to WoW the last couple of days and being unavoidably aware of just how much better WoW is in every single way except for the voice acting I think it's too little, too late for me.

I don't want to be one of those people who hangs around in theads for games I no longer play, sniping, because that's an incredibly annoying thing to do, so all I'll say further is that it was actually really nice to meet some f13'ers in-game for once and that maybe I'll revisit it in 6+ months time. I got 2-3 months of play out of it, which isn't bad really!

Wrong word - it'll always be affordable to those who can afford it. But it probably won't be cheap.

I hope it is incredibly expensive.

I'll play humans anyway, and like the idea of seeing a few but not many blue jedi and green sith.

What did I miss? A nerf for the Bounty Hunter but not for the Trooper? That would prove my conspiracy theory that BHs vent out heat quicker than Troopers recharge ammo. Not to mention channeled skills...

More buttons for the Knight, awesome, Ingmar will be pleased.

Also, it says in there you'll only be able to use legacy abilities when using your 20 minute exciting-music cooldown, which also means only in places you can use companions.

Which makes quite a bit of sense, both in restricting overpowered shit, and making the exciting-music cooldown more exciting.

I read it as more that it's on a shared CD with the same restrictions, not activated with the music ability.

Sad face about the BH nerf, hope they aren't targeting shieldtechs, because things slowed to a crawl on Ilum without dps (Mako in heal mode and me tanking).

Yeah, my understanding is that BHs have more effective energy than Troopers, and I know Death From Above channels evenly whilst Mortar Volley is completely backloaded. I'd also heard something about Full Auto not being quite equal to the BH version, but I've not noticed anything in particular.

With some of these differences between Republic and Empire abilities (particularly channels), I do wonder if they were done by two different teams, with little more than bullet points on a whiteboard for reference.

Ammo is made of chunks, heat is granular, I think that's the reason why heat feels faster than ammo.  They recharge at the same rate, but with ammo you have to wait for a full chunk to recharge while heat only needs to come back to a particular percentage point.

To be fair, I could roll up a Republican Sith for free, but Mattemeo would have to spend credits.  You should get a free unlock if you get a race to 50 that is human or already unlocked.

While the delay thing between channeled Vanguard and Powertech skills is obvious and factual and demonstrated, the thing about power usage and regen is definitely not something I'd put my money on, still trying to determine it. I just watched over and over the video of a Powertech doing very high damage and noticing he seldom runs out of ammo (overheat in his case) regardless of what he does. Considering I've been playing for a long time with what is pretty much the top pvp equipment (and relative mod-twinking) and with his same spec (I asked him about it), not only I wonder how he can pull out such damage (difference in timing of channeled skills is certainly one reason), but most importantly how can he do that without even stressing his energy bar that much. That bothered me a lot, on top of Bioware stupidity in the lobnger animations issue which is still not fixed after 2 months. It's already annoying enough, but to move to ranked PvP with that shitty imbalance would be very annoying.

Here's the video I'm talking about. 648k Powertech in Voidstar (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V12Um0vnojM), good grief.

12 Ammo, Heat goes from 0 to 100.

Comparing two abilities:

Stock Strike - costs 2 ammo.
Rocket Punch - generates 16 heat.

Rocket punch 'should' be 16.666 heat, but is rounded down. The argument from the min-maxers is that over the course of an extended fight, these rounding differences add up (as many of the bread and butter abilities cost 2 ammo/16 heat).

Meh.

IIRC there's a 4% discrepancy due to quantization of cells vs heat (12 ammo cells = 96 units, 100 heat = 100 units, but all skills cost the same ammo/heat). edit: aww, ninja'd by Jherad

The bigger differences are the death from above / mortar volley and unload / full auto animations that result in evenly distributed damage for BHs, but backloaded damage for troopers (in fact, you can move 0.5sec before your mortar animation finishes and the last missile will still land). It's kinda clownshoes and I got peeved the first few times my mortar volley failed to interrupt a cap because of the ridonkolous 2-second wind-up time. Oh well!

I think that is the case. It's rounded down, giving an advantage to the Powertech, especially due to the aforementioned granularity: the needed amount of energy comes back to execute a skill comes back to a BH earlier than it does to a Trooper, since heat goes down at 3%/tick while takes longer to restore a full chunk-ammo. All combined, longer animations and delayed channels, that explains to me the difference in Powertech max DPS over Vanguard max DPS. Not sure about Mercs/Comms but it's probably similar.

Simply put, no matter how little, a Powertech is more PvP-efficient than a Vanguard. And that's not just about the DPS race, it's about winning games considering that sometimes a fraction of seconds determines the difference between a win or a loss. As a vanguard, good players can interrupt my channels before they start doing any damage since they can see the casting bar before it hits them. Ion cannon being the most affected by this crap.

Ah well, bummer. But I don't remember shit like this since the Age of Conan debacle with women chars being handicapped in melee fighting due to animations timing. Took them months to fix it too.

Without clicking....you linked a pvp video, didn't you Falc.

For fuck's sake, split the code. EQ2 did it in 2004.

(See I can be grumpy, too!)

You want to know another AMAZING thing EQ2 did at the time (well, Hartsman did it), around 2006? Not only they added PvP to their ultra-PvE game, with the not so complicated but seriously awesome mechanic of the split code, but they added a third player faction on the run one year later, the "without-faction" ones, because obviously a game with PvP could not function with only two sides.

Sad thing number 1: Hartsman forgot about it and didn't do anything like that in Rift.

Sad thing number 2: They will claim it's too hard to do it for SWTOR so they probably won't ever do it (I'd love to be proven wrong). So harder than it was in EQ2? One wonders...

Except EQ2's 'third' PVP faction (Exiles) fucking ruined the game, as 90% of the players betrayed to Exile for PVE reasons and you ended up with an FFA PVP ruleset instead of a two (or three) faction system. Aside from the split-code you guys like to froth about, everything about PVP in EQ2 was godawful and broken and that game should never be brought up as an example of how to do PVP right in an MMO.

I remember EQ2's pvp being awful.  As in, I tried playing and all that happened was I kept getting ganked by uber-decked out twinks on carpets every 5 minutes, in every zone for leveling.

No thank you.

Well...yeah. I never pvp'd in EQ2, I couldn't care less.

But I also never had to deal with shit like nerfs because ability X is kerpwning everyone in pvp.

So that would be a pretty good thing to implement.

Mortar Volley used to be 4 ticks at one point in Beta. They removed a tick but didn't change the animation.

That's world PvP in every diku, though.

You are missing the point. PvP in EQ2 was not right, it's definitely not an example of PvP done right. It couldn't be, seriously. It just proved that yes you can add a third PvP faction on the fly, and yes you can do split PVE/PVP powers and skills.

The thing I find amusing is that we're still fucking this up even after AoC.

Except adding that third faction effectively emptied the other two (since you could just betray to it and didn't need to reroll). You are trying to use EQ2 to make a point that was blatantly incorrect. Please stop.

I thought he was saying that EQ2 changed things on the fly (put damage on a different system than pve and added a 3rd faction) and that SWTOR could too if they wanted to.  I think he has a point.

I will agree with the rest of you that EQ2's pvp was complete shit.   

I can drop a V8 in a 69 Firebird, surely I can do the same to a Toyota Prius.

Don't you watch Top Gear?   :grin:

The fact that skills worked differently in PVP and PVE is a good thing EQ2 did. Adding a 'third' faction was a bad thing.

Classic Daoc didn't have this problem.

You solve it by not having exponentially better and better gear.

I'll take a cheque if EA is listening.

Classic DaoC didn't have world PvP, unless you are talking about the dreds, which certainly had that kind of camping.


If you didn't enter the RvR zones, you had zero chance of being ganked by anyone in DaoC.



I'm still for stat caps though.

Early on there were several ways to break into an opposing realm. I distinctly remember playing a baby Mid waaay back when (I believe it was a Kobold Runecaster, even) and seeing some Albs running around the starter area eating babies or some such.

Yea, there were zone wall holes, but those were bugs and the CSR's would step in pretty rapidly in my experience. One of the few times you actually saw the little gemstones on live realms.

Oh right, I'll agree with that.

I'll edit to add that while you can add a third faction on the fly, the mechanics and incentives of switching were not done properly.

I will argue that while in most MMO's you can add a third faction easily enough, that doesn't really apply to SWTOR because every class would need an entirely new story written and recorded.  In EQ2 it was a matter of a few additional NPC's and setting up the correct faction flags - once those were set, all the normal NPC interactions applied based on your current standing.

Empire, Republic, Mercenaries.

There, I just added a third faction.  You can always align with a faction until level 50 and then choose your own side.  No story changes required.  Just give each some balanced benefit and people might self-select for which they prefer.

I felt right from the beginning that both Smugglers and Bounty Hunters should have been available to both Empire and Republic. Having them as their own mini-faction would be interesting as well but mechanically harder given the way the Story runs within the game. But I think Smuggler and Bounty Hunter stories could be very easily tweaked to work for either class, with relatively few changes. Bear in mind that I've only experienced BH/Smuggler content to the late 20s, though.

Doesn't work.  None of the dialogue or storylines acknowledge you being a 'mercenary'.  You have to write new dialogue for that.  You can't throw a 'mercenary' into the Trooper storyline without significant changes, or either Jedi storyline, or the Sith storylines, or the Imperial Agent storyline.

The bounty hunter and smuggler storylines are (as far as I have played) indeed much closer to being 'independent' and they should have been set up that way from the start.  You probably could theoretically split those two off into their own faction by tweaking the stories a bit.  At least, up to the point I have played them.

TOR was originally going to have a Hutt faction, I was pretty bummed when they pulled that early on.

No, the point is three factions, or more, are necessary in any game that has open PvP, and so making the Exiles in EQ2 was a good idea and an amazing effort. The way they fucked it up, and that you keep mentioning, was pretty amusing and would be hard to replicate it in a new game. EQ2 has been used as an example of a team trying to make PvP without forgetting rule #1 (two sides are just wrong if you have open world PvP) and rule #2 (don't mess PvE skills due to PvP and vice versa), but no one said EQ2 was PvP done right. Stop missing the point.



Yes. That's for sure. They pulled out a great thing, only to make it rot when it didn't behave as they planned. I think we all agree that to make those mechanics right, after all they've done, would have been the easiest thing. There were obvious viable solutions, and still they did... not much. Pretty sure they didn't have the resources or the incentives to do so anymore at that point.

Let's archive EQ2 and add the fucking Hutt faction to SWTOR pretty please.

And the broker!


 :grin:

OMG! Guild Banks! That's so 10 years ago!

Flashpoints don't interest me unless they drop columi weapons, implants, earpieces, and rating 136 mods.  Right now you cannot get anythhing other than columi armor from flashpoints so they lose their replayability value once you've got a set of armor.

A new warzone and warzone rankings!!! OMG, but honestly PVP sucks in this game because crowd control is OUT of control.  The resolve bar always seems to be down so you are stunned, knocked back, slowed, yanked back again by a merc, and then knocked down by an operative. If you happen to still be alive after all of this happening to you within the pace of 10 to 15 seconds, maybe your resolve bar will save you from another chain CC sequence for a whole 3 seconds.  

I'm legacy level 20 something on my main, but I'd be happy if legacy levels just helped your ALT's to level faster.

Improved Textures!!!! So I can lag more in Ilum doing the daily and weekly because the 1.1.5 patche that tried to give Ilum credit for Warzone kills was a horrible failure!

New appearance options!!! So we can go back to mid summer beta, and get a return of the feature to allow matching outfits!

New Corellia dailies! Because the daily commendation vendor selections are so limited that we want to give you more dailies to do to get more commendations to hoard since there will be nothing on the vendors worth a crap to buy after a few hardmode flashpoint runs!

Min-Pets!!  So we can all lag out more while standing around in the Fleet!

Anyway a lot of 1.2 should have really been in at release, but one thing that really bugs me is that there is no real sense of community in this game.  Their absolute reluctance to put up server specific forums, IMHO, makes this game feel somewhat lifeless.  It is very hard to recruit for a guild, manage PR, etc when you're lumped in the official forums trying to talk or bump threads over several other servers at the same time.

Oh gods no. I am constantly overleveling everything. Wish they'd put in xp locks, ffs.

Xp locks would be a good idea.  I'd love it if my legacy level allowed me to level only through the story quest.  After leveling enough toons to get to almost legacy 30, I'm tired of the kill and fetch-me quests.  My replay value is in the different story arcs, not the time wasters required to be the appropriate level for the story arcs.

You'd have to allow PvP to level you also though - I really don't want the sub 50 warzones to be ruined with twinkage.

I dunno, would it really be ruined? Assuming we're talking WoW-style battlegorund twinking here, of course. WoW's twinking revolved around getting all sorts of weird rare gear way before you were really meant to due to oversights when assigning quests minimum levels along with things like enchants meant for people far above your level. I don't really see how much of that would or could apply to TOR, seeing as how everything equipment-wise is pretty strictly level-gated.

Yes, but you're a weirdo.   I can't even log in for more than 30 min at a time now, Taris the 2nd time through has broken me.  I'm just so damn sick of the planet stories and only want to run the class story quests.

This is perfectly feasible if you are willing to supplement with pvp and/or space missions.  I did nothing but class/planet on my second character.

The gear difference wouldn't be as sickening as it is in the lvl 50 warzones, but you'd end up with a whole bunch of 49s in the best gear they can get dominating the field nonetheless (the difference between say a 20 and a 49 still being huge, and they'd have full custom gear slotted with purple crafted lvl 49 mods). I have three 50s at the moment, and on each I've felt a twinge of 'ugh, now I start at the bottom again' as I dinged 50 - I'm sure many would just rather not have to. There is usually a good spread of levels in the <50 warzones, and this would change quickly if you could lock XP.

They could do the same thing WOW did (have a separate bracket for the xp-off people). I don't really see a downside to that approach.

A single server XP-off bracket is never going to pop, ever.

WoW's XP-off brackets didn't work even across a battlegroup of a dozen servers. Not until they got rid of battlegroups entirely and had the PvP brackets span every server in the region.

They quite explicitly said that they recognise this so they're going to be adding specific XP buffs to allow alts to be levelled quicker by doing just the bits you want to do - like pvp or story quests only. Not in 1.2 obv.

Like I said, I don't see a downside to that approach. :why_so_serious:

(I was never fond of the idea of pvp twinks in sub-max brackets fighting non-twinks)

I saw a dev post the other day saying they are working on a LFD, but was reassuring some asshat who was complaining about community that it'll be server only.

I wonder how many months it'll take them to realize that is a shitty option and the majority of people just want to play the game regardless of who they are playing with.  It only took RIFT like 3 or 4 months to switch it to x-server.

meh

I prefer them to go single server for as long as possible.  Unlike most i've made alot of friends through pvp, and it's fun to know who you are fighting and be civil with them afterwards.

Same here.  Met some great people doing warzones (and Ilum, though not so much Ilum anymore >.>).  As a matter of fact, 5 of us just got the +10 datacron on the Republic Fleet last night.  :thumbs_up:

I;ve got no problem with that in theory, but if they want to do that here then they need bigger servers, if necessary instancing the fleet.

Logged on last night to get enough money for maybe 1 or two of the fire sale items. Hate the way they're doing that, it completely bones the casual players, but whatever. Running my first gauntlet of belsavis dailies and some guy wants to group for a 2+. We run in there with 2 heal pets (he's a marauder) and I almost die on the first encounter, had to use all my CDs and a medpac. Guy looks at my gear and almost bails. Then he says 'just run through all the dailies every night for a week or two and you should be geared up'. That sounds atrocious, just run through the same content every night for a week...so I can be geared to run through the next bit of content I'll have to repeat ad nauseum? Crazy.

At least repeating content with an alt I might see the same thing once a month, not every night.

Welcome to my world Sky.  You can either grind it out, start pugging hardmodes until you get some better gear, pvp a few days to get a centurian set, or start leveling an alt.
I've leveled two toons to 50 and found it pretty enjoyable as long as a) I don't let the quest grind make me insane between storyline quests and b) have someone to chat with on vent/skype. 

I may have to go back to leveling my toon on your server.  Would be nice to chat again.

I wasn't really grinding out daily comms so much as getting money for the stupid 1.2 fire sale.

I am happy doing my alt thing, it just sucks having scrub gear forever, with all the cool gear backloaded for when the game is essentially over.

It would be nice if there was something better for 50s to do.  Getting a pug was hell when I quit.

Maybe it was a mistake centering nerd night around newbies - it's the end game where it's tough finding groups :)

Haven't really played lately, but if we did a Flashpoint night on Sunday or Monday I'd be up for it (only days that would really work for me since I'm a West Coaster that usually works evening shifts).

Of my many complaints about this game, gearing up really isn't one of them.  There are a whole bunch of reasonable options for solo/small gorup folks to gear up (pvp, hardmodes, dailies, normal ops).  I run an 8 man f&F guild and there is always something to do even if only a couple of folks are on.  PvP is great for acquiring a nice base set of gear, three days of dailies and completed weeklies will be enough to buy your champion weapon, which is pretty great for PvP and PvE.

Compared to some of the grinds in other games I am just not seeing it (oh the relic grind in LOTRO was the worst).  If you never want to see the same content (or only on a limited basis) I think you are up against a genre problem, not something particular to this game.

One other point:  This game is really one of the best I have ever played for small f&F guilds (like mine).  The 4 man/ 8 man requirements mean it is reasonable for us to see all the endgame content.  For the first time I have a core group of friends actually playing regularly, even considering all the shitty implementation, because the devs actually designed something we could all hang out and participate in.  So good on them for that.

Good for you.

We're having a hard time getting together for a couple hours one night a week, and it's the most available night for the 4 people involved.

Also, doing the heroic 2+ daily showed me how much they shit on the solo dailies. A purple mod + 3 comms vs a single comm? Yeah no.

The way we're doing it now, yes, totally.  I had originally thought "nerd night" was so we could see the other class' stories without having to run every class up to cap on our own. 

Yep, that's the opposite of what I had intended, since the class stories are the main thing I'm savoring.

I move to put the concept back into committee for re-evaluation!

Kind of my thoughts.  I went to Ilum to see if I could do any of it to bump my gear up.  The non-heroics were a total slog (with one's trigger "not available at this time" or such).  I went to the 2+ heroic and logged off in despair.

Really all I want is the creds to buy her purple saber crystals.  Fuck it if it's going to be that painful, especially since I wager were I decked out in the good mods, the content would probably be trivial.

Yes. The marauder I was with tanked the 2+ without a problem (I'm a shieldtech)  :oh_i_see:

The heroic 2's are a joke if you have stealth.

Not on Republic side, since you have to kill the stuff anyway to complete them.

They're adding dailies on Corellia in 1.2 that might be easier than Ilum; Belsavis also has easier dailies (albeit with a smaller cash payout per-quest.) How much are the purple ones?

$125k iirc. A couple nights of running dailies I almost have enough for one.

 :oh_i_see:

Looks like the Republic generally loses the "retarded looking tier set" lotto this round, minus the trooper.

(http://media-titanium.cursecdn.com/attachments/40/58/trailer1-32.jpg)

ooof. Gonna be a LOT of people paying the creds to rip the mods out of the new stuff.

If you never did the Voss bonus series, that's a large chunk of cash at 50 and you don't have to do any 'repeat content'.

I don't mind that set so much.  It's not very "Starwars" but meh. A lot of the art in this game makes me unhappy. My current sith inquisitor set is horrible. PVP set has feathers for a hat that makes me look like i tried to put a turkey on my head for Halloween and the Columi/Rakata is a pope hat.

With regard to dailies, if you do them all on Ilum and Belsavis you should net around 160k, 4 purple mods which you can sell for 75k easy, and 25 daily coms.  Spend 8 of those for a barrel/hilt and speed up the next days run.  Although I'm pretty well geared it takes 1.5 hours with a buddy. We eat a death on both heroic 4's but doesn't really matter, quest gives you 10k credits and death is 5k repair.  Lights Out H4 we click and die. The other we run to the boss and die behind him. Trash resets and we quick travel out after we are done.

If dailies are too much trouble and you prefer mindless activities, you can run Boarding Party regular at level 50 and just loot the chests. Selling all the drops you get and money for killing the 2-3 groups/bosses will net you around 40-60k credits. I timed myself yesterday and it took 12 minutes start to finish. Reset and go as many times as you like.

Neither of those is overly entertaining but neither are HM's after the 20th time you've run them.

I largely like that new set, minus the Smuggler stuff and the Knight's shoulder antennae. The Consular's sorta-toga combined with that hood is kind of  :oh_i_see:  but I still kind of dig it.

Apparently I'm not 1337.

As far as the armor goes, subtract a pair of earmuffs, the shoulder fins and the out-of-place sage hood and I think it's quite nice. Although the sage's outfit make her legs look fat, so no woman will wear it. Also bordeline on the robe strips on the knight, I guess.

Not like I need to worry about it, see comment #1.

Does that knight chestplate have cutouts for his nipples?  :ye_gods:

The Trooper has a school bell on his arm.

What does the empire armor looks like?

Ah, sorry. Here they are.

(http://i.imgur.com/rjMKB.jpg)

Bad, but still. Bounty Hunter looks good though.

Wait, empire has warlocks now?  :why_so_serious:

I like how it looks like the agent is trying to pretend she doesn't know these people.

That kinda fits with the canon if you've ever played an agent in TOR.

The JK armor chestpiece should be called "The Situation"

Well, shit. I loooove me some reusable stims. I think it was a nice perk for taking the skill - make consumables for friends and sale, but you don't have to constantly pump them out for yourself - especially adrenals. I'd probably stop using them entirely on my biochem character; much like I don't bother with them (read: can't afford) on my non-biochem characters. Hell, I'm so stingy I almost never use stims or medpacs, either.

Hooray! More inexplicable sticky-out shit late level gear!

</thought this was going to be less clownshoes than WoW>

 :heartbreak:

Shoulders are still too small yet... 1.3 or BUST!

Not unless he has four of them.

Hopefully that hood on the consular set is the head piece so you can turn it off, and not somehow attached to a tiny strip of cloth on one shoulder and thus all part of the chest piece.  Also, why does the inquisitor look like Sil from Species?

108+ stat is still better then no stat.

True, and apparently I'll never make the good crafting stuff because I don't raid.

The worst thing about TOR is that they focus on making it like an mmo  :grin:

Actually the reason I wouldn't wear that sage outfit is because one shoulder is missing. I hate one-shoulder-tank-top outfits with a passion.

I like the trooper outfit (but I LOVE what my trooper currently wears) and I like the JK outfit if the shoulders weren't dumb. The smuggler outfit minus the repulsive helmet is ... still pretty ugly, so definitely wouldn't wear it.

Well at least we know what the carrot looks like... Good thing I dislike them.

Always makes me think of this NSFW PICTURE:

Aim gear looks good, as does the Cunning gear once you hide the helmets I think.  Strength is still stupid.  Only split is with the Willpower stuff as I quite like the Consular stuff but have no clue what's going on with Inquisitor.

Hopefully that orange on the Agent set is not the highest set or I will be sad.

I don't think it looks too bad.  Maybe because it's fairly unique, has pants and is not a robe nor is it hideous.  Now that I think about it, unless I'm overlooking something I think that's the first off shoulder outfit I've seen in an MMO I've played.

I hate them in real life too. I think they look fucking stupid as hell.

The outfit reminds me of World of Warcraft, the Maiden of Virtue raid boss (it's not the same, but it's not a very scifi outfit).

I figured as much, but there are very few MMO in-game outfits I'd want to wear in real life anyway.

The one nice thing about imperial agents is that I honestly think we have the best looking PvP and Pve gear.

I think it has something to do with looking like outfits people might consider wearing somewhere outside a Las Vegas show.

Some more info to chew on coming out of the guild summit.  I haven't had much problems as an operative yet (only 46) but any help is welcomed....

What level legacy do I need to get to in order to unlock a new quickbar to hold all those new abilities?

 :ye_gods:

I have 1 million credits now, I make about 20k profit per mod I sell, so I only have to sell 200 more mods to be able to... sell mods from my ship!

Awesome, I can afford the first levels of fleet pass and QT. Except I just use security vendor fleet passes because the CD is too long on the other one so I forget to use it. I can't even afford my tier 3 speeder license, which is apparently going to get more expensive anyway, let alone the tier 3 speeders, which are going to get more expensive with 1.2. Playing four nights in a row I made 200k doing dailies, completely ignoring the alts I want to be playing.

Apparently I'm REALLY FUCKING BROKE and Doing It Wrong.

I told you, do the Voss bonus series, that will net you another couple hundred (once you factor in all the crap that drops and you sell, selling the green rewards you don't need, etc), and it is NEW CONTENT you haven't seen!

Yeah, I know. I just finished the Belsavis bonus series, took me three nights. At that rate, I could unlock a couple more things by summer! If I don't drive myself bonkers because I'm ignoring my alts :)

Also, yay for unlocking the fucking CYBORG race on my account. Pfft. If I'd have known that, I'd have leveled another guy first, ffs.

Going from 18 hours to 15 hours for the fleet pass is stupid anyway.

It isn't totally clear if it goes from 18 to 15, or 18 to 3. 15 would be pretty much a waste of time, yeah.

I think I read that we are getting another quickslot bar with the patch too?

Or that the companion bar won't take up a quickslot bar or something?

An extra quickbar would be awesome, as it stands they'd have to hold back with giving us more buttons. Which would be a shame.

On my server, I can sell any size stack of low to mid-grade purple metal for 98k, as long as there isn't any on the market.  I've sold 5 alusteel for 98k more than once.  It's too easy and almost scary, as I've never had anywhere near this kind of monetary success in any other mmo.

Another quickbar wouldn't help me as I don't have that many hands.  How about some ability consolidation instead?

I don't understand how you can only make 200k doing four nights of dailies?

There are only 5 solo dailies on Ilum, right? At 10k each. I don't think he's doing the Belsavis ones (which are what, 6.5k each?) on top of Ilum.

You also get credits for killing stuff along the way, so a 10k reward must be at least 20k total.

Not that I nothing anything about dailies, I don't do them as the concept is patently absurd.

Limited play time.

Agreed.

Perhaps I'm just slowing due to my age, but I find playing my Immortal Jugger' is at the very limit of my "make use of all your abilities at the right time" range. If we get any more buttons to press I'll fall way back.

My Sorc is more managable, but I smell a nerf in the air for Sorc (hinted at by GZ before he launched his own Tracer Missile at the BH talents) which would make me sad as I like the Sorc playstyle.

so how would the sage/sorc outfits look on a male character? I certainly hope it's a different model  :uhrr:

Hmm, I wonder what they're going to do with Tracer Missile (and I presume Grav Round). Just sticking a cooldown on it will cause problems, but there absolutely should be some diversity in abilities used for those specs.

I am amazed at how powerful my trooper was whilst leveling compared to my other classes (once I got my healing companion), so I could see the writing on the wall somewhat. Of course, now I'm leveling a DPS sage, and so far I'm finding the same thing again - all the DPS of the trooper, but with none of the ammo problems.

All the current outfits that show up on female chars as belly-t's are full torso jackets on male chars.

Seconded x1000.  My Shadow had a ridiculous number of abilities I used frequently, pushing my old-man APM to the limit, even with a fancypants mouse.  Exacerbated by the fact that some of them were only useful when procs happened, which meant I needed to keep an eagle eye on those tiny buff boxes.  Definitely one of the two main reasons I stopped seriously playing (the other was travel/trash to questing ratio from the warrenlike zone layout).  Fixing the spam, either by thinning out abilities or allowing Rift-style conditional macros, would make the game a lot more enjoyable for me.

I've been messing with a bounty hunter lately to chat with some old EQ friends playing TOR now, and he seems a lot less spammy (and WAY more powerful, though I really miss having stealth to skip omgthetrash).  Though he's only lvl 20, and I don't remember if the shadow had gotten annoying at that point.

Yeah another quick slot bar doesn't really interest me because it feels like I have too many abilities to track as it is, and I'd rather have some ability consolidation.

It's the AE, both kinds of BH get half a dozen ways to AE mobs from like level 10.

The difference between our BH / Sorcerer duo and our Assassin / Warrior duo is rather staggering.

Well the Assassin/Warrior is some combination of tank/tank/dps/dps, where the BH/Sorc duo at least has someone who can heal, if not both of you depending on the kind of BH.

I can already feel the difference between the Vanguard/Gunslinger duo and the Marauder/Operative duo.

Shit died WAY FASTER in our gunslinger/guardian duo than the guardian/sage duo. I think next up, but who knows when it will actually happen, will be the commando (that's the healer one, right? I can never remember.)/gunslinger duo. Unless Ingmar suddenly feels compelled to EMPIRE IT UP.

Commandos are the Healers/Ranged DPS yes.

Vanguards are the Tanks/Melee DPS.

DPS/DPS in both cases.

The Assassin and Marauder are much more single-target, whereas the BH and Sorc have good damage area attacks that also do crowd control, and protective bubbles.  Throw in the option of up to two good healer companions, the difference in capabilities is huge.  Groups go much faster, and single targets aren't much slower.  Plus the original duo couldn't stand up to champion mobs well at all.

BH and sorcs are stupid easy to level.  Operators are a bit more challenging.  Snipers are a pain until they get Loken. 

The same holds for the pve endgame.  My op and sniper are dead weight in comparison to those two classes in hard mode/raid runs.  I think they let me tag along because nobody else can use the cunning drops.

Sniper is fantastically useful because of the barrier, but being a turret means I wouldn't play one myself I think.

For Operatives though, I do think I'd be more useful to my raid as a DPS Sorc.  I could still interrupt (which is the big issue with Merc) and off-heal and I both have a much longer max range and I can stay at it.  Maybe a bit less mobile though for current fights as there's not a load of long movement phases.  Solo'ing would be a lot less fun and we'd be in a worse way for crowd controls in KP, but I'm not sure how much that will be an issue going forward.

Downside is that leveling one is like leveling a Warlock, which isn't fun at all.

Legacy preview (http://mmo-mechanics.com/news.php?article=1-2-legacy-system-preview)

It should be noted that while you still can't romance same sex companions (yet?), apparently there is nothing stopping legacy gay marriage between your own characters.  So in a way, Bioware has patched in some gay.  :lol:

Thats cool

(http://torwars.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/storm-troopers-kissing.jpg)

Hot frownie on frownie action.

Ya but rift devs dont wear their pants on their heads. Except the bard dev.