What was the process like for creating the in-game signage? I'd love to see one of the involved devs (is it the art team in general? Specific Aurebesh expert guys?) walk us through the process of referencing other games and old school sources to source a font from the various takes on Aurebesh, talk about whether there are additional "real" alphabets in the game, and if they were created FOR SW:TOR, how the approval process with LA went. I'd also love to see answers about how alternate versions of some letters snuck in to confuse us...

For me, the UI's failures aren't in the cooldown department. My biggest beef about wrestling with the UI in this game is that the builds I play seem to be reliant on procs that reset cooldowns. So it's not that the cooldowns are hard to spot or read, it's that I have to watch for buffs or I have to keep my eyes glued to the hotbar to see if something forces a cooldown to reset and break my sense of internal timing/rhythm. Things like Particle Acceleration or resetting Rail Shot ought to have visual cues on the character. A good example of an excellent proc "notification" is when Guardians parry to be eligible to use Riposte. The blue flash coming off the lightsaber/character works very effectively to notify the player that this change in the routine timing of their rotation has occurred. Using something similar when a proc resets a cooldown would be an excellent and much appreciated tool. Likewise, I'd like to see buffs or debuffs with a chance to be applied have a spell graphic so we can see when they go off without having to stare at the buff bars.

Quick bump.

Okay, so my question, and hopefully we can get a designer/developer response here at some point, is this: I'm familiar with Aurebesh, and appreciate that it's used pretty pervasively. I enjoy spotting things and working them out; one of these days I'll take some taxi rides in Nar Shaddaa and Coruscant just to take screenshots of the billboards that are out in the "sky lanes" as it were. However, there are a few things I've observed. First off, fellow translators, is that the game observes a little known (or, at least, I hadn't heard of it before I stumbled across it looking for some explanation for what I was seeing) convention with Aurebesh, namely to rotate letters 180 degrees to represent capitals. This should save some of you guys a lot of head scratching and bug reporting, lol. Secondly, and my first question to the devs -- is there any rhyme or reason to why there are two characters you guys use for the letter 'R'? I've seen the standard one I find in all references and fonts, and then I also occasionally see something that doesn't appear to be an Aurebesh character at all from any of my references, but when you translate everything around it, appears to be intended as an R. What's the deal with this? And finally, are there any other alphabets in the game? I see, particularly on places like Nar Shaddaa, a lot of posters and apparent signage that looks like it might be writing, but isn't Aurebesh. More than one style of things I suspect might be writing, in fact. Is there a Huttese language you guys have come up with or something? If so, can we get a crib sheet to reference and translate some of this stuff?

This is my number one request for a minor addition.

If you want to improve and extend crafting for Cybertechs, how about making it so we can craft all the same types of mods as can currently be bought off commendation vendors from max level dailies. It's bad enough that an entire crafting skill can be bypassed with daily rewards, but then to have those daily rewards include things we can't even offer? It's really rather insulting.

Since you're assessing end-game utility for Crew Skills, and in particular Cybertech, can you comment on how Cybertech is meant to be relevant when level 50 dailies reward purple mods and armorings? Grinding daily heroics = expensive (materially) crafting products for free. Really?

Tech or Force attacks, you mean, surely? Since Energy attacks mirror, you know, Kinetic attacks, in all defenses. Just like Internal and Elemental attacks are basically the same.

Vordea, that's all fine and well, except Kinetic Combat doesn't proc Circling Shadows. We pay double what Infiltration Shadows do for Project, and it's just as critical, if not more so, in our rotation. Worst case scenario, we use Project on cooldown (worst case meaning NOT proccing any Particle Accelerations) because we use it to maintain threat, which is going to mean 10 times a minute, or 225 extra Force spent on Project than an Infiltration Shadow would (because they'll proc their two stacks of Circling Shadows). Looking at your numbers, and subtracting out that 225 extra Project Force, I'd say 519 FPM vs. 563 FPM doesn't look too bad. Here, we'll assume both Shadows take Psychokinesis. I have no idea if this is common for Infiltration builds, but it seems likely. We'll also assume that both Shadows use Project on cooldown, with Double Strikes or Clairvoyant Strikes, respectively, as affordable between. The Kinetic Combat Shadow will use a minimum of 390 Force on Project (More is possible based on Particle Acceleration procs), reducing his "non-Project" Force pool to 354 Force regenned per minute. The Infiltration Shadow will be spending either 16.5 or 19.5 Force per Project (I'm not sure what order the discounts are applied in), leaving him spending 165 or 195 Force per minute on Project, leaving him with 398 or 368 Force regenned per minute for non-Project activities. Looks pretty darn even, to me. Obviously, this is a simplified, idealized scenario, because both Shadows are going to be using Project, on average, slightly less often, simply because neither can afford to keep pace with the proccing. That 368 or 398 Force for Infiltration Shadows is less than the 460 Force necessary to proc 20 stacks of Circling Shadows a minute, and the Kinetic Combat Shadow could potentially be proccing more Projects, but at an average of 2 Double Strikes to proc Particle Acceleration, he can afford to try even less, so probably won't be getting that many more Projects out of the deal over an extended period of time, and even if he could go on a ridiculous PA-proccing spree, he can't afford to keep stacking many more Projects into his rotation in the first place.

It's supposed to be low. We've got a lot of very good, low cooldown abilities, and most of our talents allow us to proc to make them more available. Shadow is a Force regen-gated class, rather than a cooldown gated class. It's the way it's balanced. We have a lot of tools to choose from, and we have a playstyle that requires the tools be *available* when we need them, so they can't have long cooldowns to keep us from spamming the most awesome stuff all the time. Instead, we have a resource mechanic that keeps our awesomeness reigned in to balanced levels. In addition, it gets better as you level. We're very Force starved at low levels, because we haven't talented up the benefits like Psychokinesis, One With the Force, Force Strike, Mental Potency, Circling Shadows, Situational Awareness, Shadow's Respite, Masked Assault, and Fade, all of which are either resource saving or resource generation abilities. And that's what it comes down to. YES, you're supposed to be using Blackout and Force Cloak a lot. That's how Infiltration Shadows manage Force use -- they accelerate regeneration in short bursts, and talent up ways to get that burst more frequently. Infiltration and Balance Shadows get several ways to proc free or discounted attacks that would otherwise be very taxing to include in a rotation. Kinetic shadows boost their regeneration. It's simply the way the class works.

Just show up and give Dragon*Con some love.

I enjoy obscure/involved exploration and experimentation. It hearkens back to the old days of EQ before spoiler sites proliferated and/or the release of the original epic quests, whose design precepts truly made them epic quests rather than merely quests which resulted in a really awesome item. The experience of hunting around for how to complete stage after stage with a large community contributing was very, very memorable. I'm not an artificer, so I didn't really have anything to do with this one, but judging from the thread size, this was probably a (much compacted, simply due to the comparative size of community and thus ability to parallelize man-hours) echo of those days.

If I could only choose 3 (and I understand the desire to limit it to something less than "One on every planet," in order to drive traffic to social hubs), I would apply the following factors to my choice: I would choose to put them on planets with required Orbital Stations. Planets with spaceports don't have the extra (annoying, I might add, particularly since I've never seen an airlock add any meaning for the game) loading screens. This is a point against Alderaan, Taris, Coruscant -- which has one already, anyways, if memory serves -- and Nar Shaddaa (which has a Hutt Trade Network; I wouldn't want both present on the same planet). I would choose to put them on planets that are large. This eliminates Quesh. Smaller planets mean that travel back to the Fleet isn't as big a chore in the first place. I would choose planets at a variety of level ranges. Don't bunch them up as successive planets or what not; a big factor of which derives from the following: I would choose planets which provide good crew skill harvesting potential for different tiers of material. A big portion of the GTN users are crafters who want to sell their wares. Harvesting is an activity that often overlaps with the actual production of items, and thus the need to list those produced items. This eliminates planets like Hoth which are grossly dissatisfying sources (understandably, in Hoth's case) of materials. Since I'm currently up to questing on Hoth, I can't speak for certain on my exact preferences for all 3 locations, yet. That's why I chose to lay out my criteria, so those with more experience at the final levels and planets can gauge my appreciation of such selections. However, I will point out that the stand-out choice for me thus far is Balmorra. I'm not sure how many planets I've got left, so if there's only really room for 1 additional location beyond Hoth, I'd say I'd add either Taris or Alderaan, despite their failing the "Orbital Station" criteria, which is probably the least important of my criteria, especially in the face of the sprawling nature of both these planets.

Even if you look at double strike and decide that "there's only so many ways you can hit a target twice".. why not add a few more? And on top of that, if I can't flourish while attacking, how about letting me flourish my saber on occasion while activating Force abilities. A simple flick of the wrist to spin my double-saber at my side while Projecting would go a LONG way to making me look more exciting in combat.

Are you equally levelled to your friends?