SW: The Old Republic - Episode VII (J.J. Strikes Back)

[ShadySands]

 

Hey folks,

 

First off, we want to thank all of you for your feedback about Companion balance following 4.0.2. As we go into the weekend, we wanted you to know that we have gone through this thread, the forums, Reddit, and social media to gather everyone’s perspectives. We have come out of this with quite a few action items that we are going to take, including buffs for Companions. On Monday, we are going to release a forum post highlighting our plans to address current Companion balance, along with the state of Heroic Missions and Star Fortress.

 

Thank you all once again for your feedback. 

 

-eric

[Gorth]

Let me guess... their metrics showed a large number of people unsubscribing after path?

 

The butthurt was great amongst the casuals who just wanted everything handed on a silver platter. It's like the slot machine fiasco all over again. First ridiculously generous with it's payback chance, then as a knee jerk reaction nuking it into uselessness. And it was such a good idea. Doing things with moderation just doesn't seem to occur to them.

[213374U]

Let me guess... their metrics showed a large number of people unsubscribing after path?

 

The butthurt was great amongst the casuals who just wanted everything handed on a silver platter. It's like the slot machine fiasco all over again. First ridiculously generous with it's payback chance, then as a knee jerk reaction nuking it into uselessness. And it was such a good idea. Doing things with moderation just doesn't seem to occur to them.

 

It's also the same people who were throwing a hissy fit over Bioware "ruining their fun" when the slicing nodes were nerfed. Where is the fun in making millions just by walking around, breaking the economy in the process? Presumably it's the same "fun" as AFK'ing your way through content. Ah, but who cares.

 

 

Here's the datamined buffs

 

The buffs aren't quite at the original 4.0 values but they are roughly a 70% - 75% increase over the current values.

 

So assuming these numbers hold, we're looking at a final 45-50% nerf over the 4.0 baseline. Most likely still unacceptable to the /unsub crowd.

Edited November 21, 2015 by 213374U

[ShadySands]

 

Hello, everyone.

 

My name is Michael Backus, and I’m the Lead Designer for Star Wars: The Old Republic. I wanted to take a minute to apologize for the recent Companion changes and address combat balance. I wanted to do so personally because as fans of Star Wars: The Old Republic and our customers, we cherish your feedback and value all of you, and I feel you deserve to hear this information directly. 

 

I would like to go over why the changes were made, what we’ve learned, and what’s going to happen going forward. There’s a short summary at the bottom if you want to skip the Why’s and get to the What’s.

 

Why the changes were made

Combat balance is a tricky thing. So many factors contribute to the question of, is this too easy or too hard--ability rotations, number of enemies and their abilities, player play style, player skill level, player class choice, Companion role, and even how well your computer can run the game. All of these things and more impact how well you play and how successful you are in combat. Jennifer might say, “This game’s a snap,” while Joe might say, “This is the hardest thing I’ve played in my entire life,” and there’s literally no way to tell who is “right”. The best we can do is create goals and do our best to make sure as many players as possible hit those goals. We posted our goals with different content types recently, here.

 

The one thing that was obvious was that Companions were overpowered in 4.0. We came to this conclusion, not only from player feedback and our own playtests, but from watching how players were playing—it is not ideal to send your Companion into combat in a [Heroic 2] and then go make tea, only to come back and collect your loot. We want combat to be engaging, to be fun. We want combat to be something, since you do it for so many hours, that can challenge you. If it’s too easy, we risk players not being engaged and getting bored. If it’s too hard, we risk players leaving and not even trying certain content anymore. 

 

So, in 4.0.2 we toned down Companion power significantly to be in line with our stated goals. And that’s where the problem occurred. 

 

What we didn’t realize was how with Knights of the Fallen Empire gameplay had evolved. As a community, you were playing differently than we had expected. I’ll give you an example.

 

Emergent Gameplay

[Heroic 2]s. Before Knights of the Fallen Empire, Heroics were not very utilized content. Most players ignored them after doing them once. So when we highlighted areas of improvement for our leveling experience, we knew we wanted to make Heroics sexier. We wanted players to have good reason to go do them, but also give players a reason to join up with their friends. What we failed to realize was how much most of you would enjoy them, but also how frequently you would engage in them. [Heroic 2]s were initially meant to be challenging content for what we would say is an “average” player. If you had good gear and really knew how to play well, you could solo them but you’d still have to pay attention to what you were doing. If you had expected gear for your level and didn’t think of yourself as that skilled, you’d probably find a friend to join you so you could both reap the rewards together. 

 

With Companions being the power level they were, “everyone” began enjoying them. And that was the point that we hadn’t realized. By reducing Companion power, we took that away from a lot of you. You could still engage in [Heroic 2]s and beat them, but they had become arduous, even grindy to many players. 

 

Our misstep was in not realizing that our goals we had set no longer fit with the game all of you were enjoying. The emergent gameplay that was created didn’t fit what we had embraced as our mandate within the Design Team.

 

Going Forward

So, what does that mean going forward? We will be increasing the power level of Companions. And while they won’t be as powerful as they were when Fallen Empire launched, the increase will be significant. I have gotten together with the Design Leads and we have re-discussed our goals for combat and content difficulty. We want players to enjoy [Heroic 2]s and level up their Alliance. You can find the exact changes coming in tomorrow’s patch, below. And I assure you, we will continue to carefully watch how content is being enjoyed and adapt as necessary.

Companion healing has been increased by roughly 48%. (Influence level and character level will determine exact amount.)

Companion damage has been increased by roughly 15%. (Influence level and character level will determine exact amount.)

Companion base stats have been increased by about 15%. (Influence level and character level will determine exact amount.)

 

 

Companion channel heal power increased by 61%

Companion single target heal power increased by 42%

Companion single target heal over time power increased by 43%

Companion base stats increased by 15%

Companion damage while in DPS or Tank Stance increased by 15%

 

Star Fortresses

Which leads me to Star Fortresses. We are going to treat Star Fortresses as a different topic from Companion balance. The initial difficulty level for Star Fortresses are clearly story content, meaning, we expect all of you to take part and enjoy them while earning new Contacts. This hasn’t changed. The difficult mode for Star Fortresses, though, we feel is a challenge that players should aspire to achieve, and not something players should easily do without gearing up their character and increasing their Companion’s Influence level. We obviously set an expectation Heroic Star Fortresses were going to be similar to [Heroic 2] content, but that was not our intention. As a result, we are going to change the “Heroic” nomenclature for Star Fortresses to something different. We’ll let you know what we decide the new name will be soon. In addition, this will allow us to balance Star Fortresses independently of Companion power, but still make it challenging without making it impossible for many players.

 

So, in conclusion, or the tl;dr for the internet savvy:

We will be increasing Companion power. It will not be as powerful as before, but the changes will be significant.

Heroic Star Fortresses will get a new moniker to denote that it’s a different type of challenge. And we will balance Star Fortresses independently of both Companion power and [Heroic 2]s to ensure they are tuned appropriately.

 

Thank you for reading and we look forward to more of your feedback as these changes go live.

 

May the Force be with you,

Michael Backus

Lead Designer

[Gromnir]

our biggest obstacle to finishing h2s at the moment is that on harbinger, the mob corpses in non instance h2 areas is not disappearing.  the info bottleneck is causing serious ability lag on multiple planets.   enemies would not actual reveal until 2-3 seconds after they attacked.  companions would disappear for a similar amount o' time.  had to quit a heroics run over the weekend as content became unplayable.  

 

am also gonna note that the respawn time for "mutations" on taris for pub side is prohibitive.  5 minutes?  get five or more folks doing at same time? 

 

as an aside, removal o' the belsavis bonus dailies is saddening 'cause, as we noted earlier in this thread, they provided excellent influence for pre kotfe companions. am also disappointed that savage skies is no longer daily, but we got so many 65s at this point that it don't matter-- am unable to get all our 65s to do complete heroic runs for the week.  yeah, savage skies daily were clear a bug, but we do kinda miss it.

 

another complete aside, am suspecting that a few classes is gonna need adjustments.  vigilance guardian should not be competing with plasmatech for best aoe dps.  tactics vanguards are arguably op.  am gonna need play around a bit more, but both shadow dps specs seem inexplicable weak in pve.  gunslingers and marksman is continuing to be excellent, but perhaps too good compared to most other classes other than tactics vanguard.  am kinda conflicted about sentinels/marauders.  we are back to situation where watchman is clear best pve spec for sentinels. watchman likely needed a boost, but am not in favor of clear win specs.  haven't had much time to play our commandos/mercs, so can't comment on those.  have only healed sage/sorc, and our tanking has been nothing other than heroics and single-player stuff... and pvp.  am gonna say that for pvp, the shift towards defense has hurt all tanks a bit.  regardless, there is some changes needed.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited November 23, 2015 by Gromnir

[213374U]

I had an ops group fail "Mutations" due to people getting tired of waiting for the respawn and leaving. And ninja stealthers "stealing" kills. It was a hair-pulling experience that I haven't tried to repeat.
 
The corpse despawn thing was fixed from what I saw after today's reboot, on TRE at least. I'm curious what could have caused it.

[majestic]

but both shadow dps specs seem inexplicable weak in pve. 

 

Was that ever any different, for either stealth AC? Occasionally they would pull decent or even top DPS in PVE but still not get much attention because they suffer from the crippling flaw of being melee classes in an environment utterly hostile to those (for the most part anyway and exacerbated for shadows/assassins because they wear rags for armor) where the only melee dps slot went to the class with the most utility, which they never were.

 

Or, no, wait, the only reason why there even was a melee dps slot in an operation group was because marauders/sentinels had such awesome utility combined with top dps.

[Gorth]

Tried a few of the heroics. The instanced ones were ok, but the one on Alderaan where you have to plant evidence on the republic corpses (shock doctrine?) was a chore. Only the silvers move away from their spawn points, the rest dies where they are, being buried in corpse piles. I wonder if a contributing factor is, a lot of people grinding the heroics don't bother looting the corpses, which means a much, much longer despawn time, as the corpse wont despawn until the loot has either been looted or despawned itself (loot will eventually disappear, but on a much longer timer).

 

Playing all 16 advanced classes, I think it's fair to say, balance is non existing. Combat hasn't been "fun" either since Shadow of Revan was released. I wish they would stop trying to put those gloves on their feet and just realise that you can't balance skills for pve and pvp simultaneously.

 

Yes, I still miss my full auto/unload for powertech/vanguard (screw their metrics, it took the *FUN* out of those 2 classes) and I resent the force mend/rend garbage they are trying to ram down the throat of marauder/sentinel players. The skill doesn't belong and has no place there. Just remove it already.

[majestic]

Playing all 16 advanced classes, I think it's fair to say, balance is non existing. Combat hasn't been "fun" either since Shadow of Revan was released. I wish they would stop trying to put those gloves on their feet and just realise that you can't balance skills for pve and pvp simultaneously.

 

Amen (and the same is true for WoW).

[Gromnir]

 

Playing all 16 advanced classes, I think it's fair to say, balance is non existing. Combat hasn't been "fun" either since Shadow of Revan was released. I wish they would stop trying to put those gloves on their feet and just realise that you can't balance skills for pve and pvp simultaneously.

 

Amen (and the same is true for WoW).

 

well, you likely could balance pve and pvp much better, but the stealth classes is extreme problematic.  as over-the-top as some o' the pre 3.0 pvp builds were (smash jugg and bubbles sage) they were viable in pve and would eventual benefit from obvious needed tweaks to limit their excessive pvp dominance.  but stealth?  stealth is a major advantage in pvp.  to balance the power o' stealth v. non stealth classes, one needs obvious reduce overall damage potential o' the shadows and agents, yes? 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Gorth]

As the saying goes, if in doubt, nerf operatives

 

Since I don't do much PVP (a once in a blue moon distraction), stealth is for me mostly a QoL thing, making the skipping of a lot of unwanted trash possible. Stealth and Ranged of the same class seems to have slightly similar rotations. Difference being one has 30+ meter range and no stealth, the other 10+ meter range and stealth so they can close the gap.

 

Still don't play PVP on my mercs/commandos (all dps) and neither on my maras/sents. Although the latter does seem to have gotten a nice survivability boost. At least for annihilation/watchman. Tried a level 44 watchman sentinel in a tactical flashpoint and the undying rage (whatever the pub translation for that skill is) on a relatively short cd helps a lot (as does stun immunity when spending the utility point) when popping the saber ward.

 

Edit: Completely unrelated, but I got a good laugh out of reading the mails from the 4 alliance guys/girls when reaching rank 10. In particular the Admiral telling me he had hired the band Black Sabbacc to come and perform for the troops. I wonder if their frontman is named anything with 'Ozzy' in it

[213374U]

As the saying goes, if in doubt, nerf operatives

 

Since I don't do much PVP (a once in a blue moon distraction), stealth is for me mostly a QoL thing, making the skipping of a lot of unwanted trash possible. Stealth and Ranged of the same class seems to have slightly similar rotations. Difference being one has 30+ meter range and no stealth, the other 10+ meter range and stealth so they can close the gap.

 

Still don't play PVP on my mercs/commandos (all dps) and neither on my maras/sents. Although the latter does seem to have gotten a nice survivability boost. At least for annihilation/watchman. Tried a level 44 watchman sentinel in a tactical flashpoint and the undying rage (whatever the pub translation for that skill is) on a relatively short cd helps a lot (as does stun immunity when spending the utility point) when popping the saber ward.

 

Edit: Completely unrelated, but I got a good laugh out of reading the mails from the 4 alliance guys/girls when reaching rank 10. In particular the Admiral telling me he had hired the band Black Sabbacc to come and perform for the troops. I wonder if their frontman is named anything with 'Ozzy' in it

 

I haven't played PVP on stealthers nearly as much as I have on my mara, but the flexibility and control advantages brought by stealth simply cannot be compensated by the meager (~5%) damage output advantage the mara supposedly has. Ninja capping as a mara? Forget about it. Node guarding? Lel. Ambushing/disabling healers? No dice. They can't even force the healer out of guard range, which a jugg can do.

 

On the other hand, Shadows/sins have excellent survivability and tools to be a veritable PITA until help can arrive. And operatives can off-/self-heal. To make up for all of that, they'd have to give maras and snipers a huge (upwards of 10%) damage boost. That would break the PVE meta and, most importantly, arenas.

[Gorth]

On the other hand, Shadows/sins have excellent survivability and tools to be a veritable PITA until help can arrive. And operatives can off-/self-heal. To make up for all of that, they'd have to give maras and snipers a huge (upwards of 10%) damage boost. That would break the PVE meta and, most importantly, arenas.

I've never really played the dot spec for assassins/shadows, doesn't that one provide some degree of self healing too?

 

Was curious about the state of companions after they changed it again again. Did a pair of solo runs on H2 Star Fortresses, both to test the current challenge level and hopefully to get a few rating 208 hilts and barrels without sharing them

 

One run with my old PT tank and one with my Assassin tank. Not going for the solo achievement, so used all 4 buffs and gadgets. Healer companions being rank 16 and 12 respectively.

 

Let's just say, all my PT used was wasd, flamethrower, flame sweep, rocket punch and rail shot (and the odd pew pew basic attack). Not bothering with heat screen, flame burst, exploding darts etc. Much less using any stuns, carbonise, oilslick debuff or interrupts. It was that easy. To be fair, the sentry turret probably provided most of the dps, giving me the only challenge in that run, trying to keep aggro from the turret.

 

Assassin was a similar story, although I did die twice, once falling off the ledge in the reactor room and once killed by lag from my crappy hotel wifi (latency of 120.000ms will do that to you, because eventually your healer companion will wear out and die when getting all the aggro).

 

Edit: My assassin got the playing with fire achievement by accident. I tried to get it deliberately at first on my PT, but the Exarch there never broke the windows.

 

Edit2: Between the 2 runs, I got 2 dps barrels and 2 tank hilts (and a pile of decorations plus some of that crafting material that normally drops from hm fps)

[majestic]

 

 

Playing all 16 advanced classes, I think it's fair to say, balance is non existing. Combat hasn't been "fun" either since Shadow of Revan was released. I wish they would stop trying to put those gloves on their feet and just realise that you can't balance skills for pve and pvp simultaneously.

 

Amen (and the same is true for WoW).

 

well, you likely could balance pve and pvp much better, but the stealth classes is extreme problematic.  as over-the-top as some o' the pre 3.0 pvp builds were (smash jugg and bubbles sage) they were viable in pve and would eventual benefit from obvious needed tweaks to limit their excessive pvp dominance.  but stealth?  stealth is a major advantage in pvp.  to balance the power o' stealth v. non stealth classes, one needs obvious reduce overall damage potential o' the shadows and agents, yes? 

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

I don't think stealth is the advantage you make it out to be. It can be if your enemies have no idea what they are doing because you can vanish and stealth cap while CC'ing a lone defender, but that is about it. There was a bunch of crying about operatives and their stealth-burst during 1.0, but that got nerfed quickly and all subsequent complains were about operative healers and not really about "OMG STEALTH NREFNREF!!!11!!oneone" after all. DPS operatives never recovered from that nerf in PVP and it was about the only thing that made them semi-viable anyway. Being able to two-shot someone every two minutes is barely game-changing (keep in mind that arena didn't exist at the time).

 

At best the DPS specs of both stealth ACs were annoying in PVP and I recall some pretty epic stealth battles on my operative healer with a certain shadow on my server, but those were all... yeah. Way back at a time when PVP gear came randomly out of boxes.

[kirottu]

Hai guis

 

I started playing again this week and I have few questions:

 

Where are the low level gear merchants? You know, the ones you could buy gear with planetary marks. Now there is only the ones who sell mods left.

 

I haven't had a single "healing potion" drop. Is this a bug or am I now supposed to buy them from stim merchants?

 

My gear doesn't lose durability anymore?

[213374U]

Hai guis

 

I started playing again this week and I have few questions:

 

Where are the low level gear merchants? You know, the ones you could buy gear with planetary marks. Now there is only the ones who sell mods left.

 

I haven't had a single "healing potion" drop. Is this a bug or am I now supposed to buy them from stim merchants?

 

My gear doesn't lose durability anymore?

 

1. Removed to deal with "vendor bloat", much like the DK/Coruscant PVP vendors. If you want gear you do heroics, you get 2 boxes with 2 random level-appropriate blue pieces each, per heroic. Easy as pie, really. Or get the orange legacy-bound level 8 pieces from the fleet vendor and outfit them with mods.

 

2. RNG, most likely. I have had medpacs drop but loot tables were changed with 4.0 and mobs drop more gray vendor trash (and a metric ****ton of jerky schematics) and gifts and less actual loot.

 

3. That's a bug. Gear losing durability seems inconsistent, dying sometimes will not cause damage, but questing around might.

[Gorth]

I think Numbers covered most. The moddable gear vendors can still be found on the various planets though. Usually at the same place where you find (green/premium) weapons, armour and mods. Look out for Special Item vendors. Some of them may still have the old moddable armour pieces.

 

What worked better for my latest alts were the level 7 (now level eight) equipment vendor on fleet. Unlike the rest, this one has no mods, just the moddable gear and with enough crystals you can buy a complete moddable set. Including weapon, offhand, head gear, bracers, belt etc. Most of it is even pretty decent looking. Got an agent still using this gear, just replacing the mods. If you don't like the looks, the appearance designer is your friend, use the level 8 moddable gear, replace the mods and slap some of the old grey, white, green and blue grade armour on top of it to change the looks of it.

 

RNG is your best friend and your worst nightmare indeed

 

Yeah, nice bug. Wait until it get fixed and listen to the outrage on the forums that people now actually have to pay for gear repairs!!!

[kirottu]

I found the moddable gear at Dromund Kaas, but for whatever reason the bounty hunter gear needs "artifact equipment authorization".

Agent gear:

 

Bounty hunter gear:

 

It's a perfect bug. Those who get it can't make a ticket, and those who can make a ticket wont get the bug.

 

Also, those heroic quest reward boxes with gear inside are blocked to f2p and preferred accounts. I think I just have to save money to buy the legacy gear.

[213374U]

I found the moddable gear at Dromund Kaas, but for whatever reason the bounty hunter gear needs "artifact equipment authorization".

 

It's a perfect bug. Those who get it can't make a ticket, and those who can make a ticket wont get the bug.

 

Also, those heroic quest reward boxes with gear inside are blocked to f2p and preferred accounts. I think I just have to save money to buy the legacy gear.

 

Ouch. WTF? I didn't know the heroic rewards were restricted to prefs (which I assume you are since you preordered RotHC). There's a limit in place for FP loot, but heroic boxes?

 

The Renowned/Exalted sets are really expensive, restricted to certain classes and have a legacy level requirement. They are also ugly for the most part. For a fraction of the price you can get a better looking full set off GTN. If you are on TRE I can hook you up with a bunch of crafted moddable heavy armor pieces, too. PM me your character's name and I'll mail the stuff to you later, if you want.

 

I'll also open a bug ticket on your behalf regarding that starter gear authorization requirement BS, if that's ok with you.

[Gorth]

I suspect the Dromund Kaas thing is a bug. The crates are intentionally locked, as you need them to "bribe" alliance contacts for affection. Currently the expansion is only available to subs, so it does make sense, even if badly communicated by Bioware. Depending on your level and reputation, there is plenty of moddable gear in the game. Bounty Brokers association for example. Has moddable, legacy bound guns too for shuffling barrels around

 

Check out tor-fashion.com for legacy gear (if legacy bound is important) and where to acquire. I believe there are more reputation vendors around selling legacy bound gear (cz-198, makeb, gsi etc.).

 

If legacy bound is not a requirement and it just has to be moddable, grab the cheapest stuff off the gtn. You would be surprised how dirt cheap some of the cartel market armour on the second hand market there. Then, as mentioned above, slap some good looking armour pieces on top of it in your character designer to maintain your good looks. Heck, you could just pick up the level 8 gear on fleet (check the map for the guy, placed together with the low level mod sellers, except this one sells gear instead of mods).

[ShadySands]

The big announcement stream was a bit of a let down

 

Rather than go into what was said I'll just paste a link to Dulfy

 

http://dulfy.net/2015/12/01/swtor-december-producers-livestream-coverage/

[Humanoid]

Played a little bit for the first time since my free month, if only because I was looking for a co-op game to play with my sister. I've heard in the past that the Jedi Consular story was the dullest of the lot, and oh boy, it seems all the reports were correct. Still on Coruscant, mind you, but I really can't get into character at all when compared to my smuggler way back when.

 

Still, it's kind of fun to troll by picking irrational dialogue options during group conversations and I think that's been the saving grace of the game this time around. If I was playing solo I think I'd have already quit again though, mechanically it still feels as clunky as ever - indeed moreso because now I have to settle for near-200ms latency to US servers, as compared to ~10ms when they hosted some in Sydney.

[Gorth]

The big announcement stream was a bit of a let down

Not really. Just guessing, but I think that was what most players who have been around for a bit expected. Nothing more, nothing less. No new end game content, next chapter released as late as possible within the promised time frame (late January/early February). Subscriber rewards that I for one couldn't care less about (Never got around to use the previous ones, Nico Ocarr gathers dust and the stim vendor got all the coats and guns). So yeah, par for the course or however the saying goes

 

Only real news (for me) bits were that Bowdaar is up next for a reunion (as most would have guessed Kaliyo already from the in-game image).

 

Played a little bit for the first time since my free month, if only because I was looking for a co-op game to play with my sister. I've heard in the past that the Jedi Consular story was the dullest of the lot, and oh boy, it seems all the reports were correct. Still on Coruscant, mind you, but I really can't get into character at all when compared to my smuggler way back when.

 

Still, it's kind of fun to troll by picking irrational dialogue options during group conversations and I think that's been the saving grace of the game this time around. If I was playing solo I think I'd have already quit again though, mechanically it still feels as clunky as ever - indeed moreso because now I have to settle for near-200ms latency to US servers, as compared to ~10ms when they hosted some in Sydney.

The dark side choices are the saving grace of the consular story. It actually gets better at the end, but the "plague" chapter is not captivating to put it bluntly.

 

Ran into the loot bug several time when soloing the H2 star Fortresses. Exarch corpse just goes poof, does a magic vanishing trick and loot is stuck in the floor. First few times, I just gave up, then in desperation tried a trick that worked elsewhere for another problem, Alt F4, restart game and log in again (while still being in the instance of course). It somehow refreshes the room and the corpse appears correctly (and can now be looted).

[213374U]

 

The big announcement stream was a bit of a let down

Not really. Just guessing, but I think that was what most players who have been around for a bit expected. Nothing more, nothing less. No new end game content, next chapter released as late as possible within the promised time frame (late January/early February). Subscriber rewards that I for one couldn't care less about (Never got around to use the previous ones, Nico Ocarr gathers dust and the stim vendor got all the coats and guns). So yeah, par for the course or however the saying goes

They were trying to drum up interest regarding sub rewards pretty hard, AFAIK, which have turned out to be pretty weak. More useless trash and the stuff people actually want is still heavily monetised (dyes/unlocks) or non-existent (more MP content). I liked how the sub rewards survey did not allow to rate all rewards so far "1".

 

And still no Yavin PVP announcement.

Edited December 3, 2015 by 213374U

[Gorth]

I miss my old companions. I miss the companion stories. Even when you recruit Lt. Pierce, SCORPIO etc. they feel "empty". Like the 5 years since you last met are non existing and no catching up other than the recruiting dialogue. No evolving stories there. Since my bounty hunter didn't get any old companion back (which my sith warrior, agent and trooper did), I used the terminal to summon Mako. I doubt very much I'm going to use the new companions much. Highest ranking Lana Beniko/Theron Shan is 6 and highest ranking Nico Ocarr is 3. They just don't have the backstory that the companions you gathered from level 1-50 has.

 

Did Black Hole for the first time since 4.0... wow, Torvix has fallen on hard times. All the golds in the "heroics" (what a ridiculous misnomer now) have been reduced to silvers and all the silvers have been reduced to common trash (one shot fodder for dps players). I guess I should look at the positives and appreciate it's fast rewards.