As I recall (haven't been active for a few months and just started poking around the game again, but I doubt it's changed) the health caps for every planet actually correspond to a LOWER endurance value than the planet's endurance cap. I'm sure that would be the source of the oddity you're observing. If you're at or below the synced level the game doesn't care what your stats are, but as soon as you get over that level the stat caps are enforced, and health is going to show the most obvious signs of this because of that strange quirk (why bother capping health at all when the endurance cap will serve that purpose anyway?) in how they set it up. But yeah, the system has its flaws but people really exaggerate the impact of it when they talk as if it makes them unable to take on weak trash mobs or whatever. Because we get to keep the benefit of all the unlocked abilities / utilities, plus the subtle benefit of the stats that aren't capped. Stuff that a character which is actually at that level and geared for that level would not have. My thoughts on it had always been that: 1) they really should have found a way to make it work regionally, not planet-wide (ie select a sync level based on X in areas with level X enemies, possibly setting sync level to X+3 or X+2 or X+1 depending on whether it's a normal area or a bonus series area or a heroic area (edit: X+0 for heroics which are part of the bonus series portion of a planet?), shift automatically when crossing any line between different regions of the map) 2) they should have considered a conditional check based on your current spec to enforce different caps based on role (go easier on the endurance/health cap for tanks compared to non-tanks, go easier on the mastery and power caps for DPS and heals compared to tanks, maybe between DPS and heals one gets better mastery and the other gets better power?) 3) sync based caps should only cut off stats from gear, not the extra received from buffs / stims / abilities / etc. (granted, some additional rules may need to be created to regulate those bonuses)

I still like the idea I used to propose on this subject where the machine could include some sort of prize ticket as a more common alternative to the cartel certificate drop, and then add options to the rep vendor where all of the items they sell have an alternative pricing using those prize tickets. Add the other machines based around each of the other reputations. Each machine has its own separate prize ticket associated with that specific rep vendor. Maybe as an example you might expect on average 25 prize tickets to drop for every certificate that drops, and in the pricings at the vendor each 1 cert and each 100k (or however many) credits in the normal costs would translate to about 10-15 prize tickets (maybe a bit more or less than that, depending on the item) in the alternative costs. All of the stuff from the rep vendors is cosmetic and bind on pickup anyway, right? So prize tickets wouldn't offer any way to try to make a profit selling rewards on the GTN. It would be purely about getting the items because you want them for yourself.

I haven't been paying attention to the game in a little while. I played the first chapter of KotET the day it launched and haven't really been in the game much to continue it since then. So as I wait for it to patch right now I saw the thing announcing the start of another xp bonus tomorrow and thought "Aren't we already in the middle of one right now?" Seriously, when did the previous bonus end? Anyway, Personally I think the problem with level sync is not that it exists or that it allows use of later skills (that part is awesome). The problem is some questionable decisions in its implementation, such as... * That it is a "one size fits all" setting across an entire world map instead of custom-fitting a unique setting for each region. (Imagine if the sync was always within 2 levels of the nearby enemies (maybe +2 in non-heroic areas and either +1 or +0 in heroic areas) instead of being set globally based on a planet maximum and being 5+ levels high in many earlier parts of the planet.) * That the above point translates into some of the vanilla class story endings leading to an extremely trivialized level 10-15 final boss fight instead of the originally designed level 50 fight. (If they can't implement regional sync settings, they ought to just move these fights to their own separate map that we load into which can have their own level 50 sync.) * That the caps cut things off after "temporary" bonus values from buffs / stims / abilities / procs / etc. instead of only capping "permanent" stats from gear and letting "temporary" bonuses apply on top of the cap. (Although fixing that one wouldn't sit well with people like yourself who want more challenge.) * That health is capped at a value that corresponds to a lower endurance value than the value that endurance is capped at. (Why? Just why?)

This idea makes for a nice addition to the list of things I mentioned in my post in that topic you linked. "Planetary Activity" could cover heroic missions, GSI missions, hotspot missions (dedicated dailies zones like Section X, Black Hole, etc.), support missions (converted bonus series stuff as you just described), and event content (when one is running). I'd also call back to some ideas I've had about conquests needing a revamp pretty much since day one of conquests. It's dumb that a conquest week typically acknowledges planetary activity (heroics, a rampage, and maybe some faction base guards or a world boss) for about 1-2 out of 3 target planets or for about 2-3 out of 5 target planets. I have long wanted to see some sort of "Conquest Mission Terminal" on every planet and dailies zone (could convert the current heroic or dailies terminal on each of those locations to create this) and each terminal would be filled with all of the planet's heroics, dailies, and weeklies including some new (possibly GSI inspired) missions introduced just for conquest as well as missions for rampages for specific regions of the planet or against specific groups of enemies, plus missions for other things like world boss, commanders, faction base guards, PVP kills, crafting/trade (ie missions where an NPC needs a delivery of materials such as the war supplies, prefab kits, assembly components, etc.) and whatever else. And then instead of needing a bunch of separate entries in the conquest week to reward points for each type of activity on each planet, it would only need an entry for each planet which rewards completion of any mission from that planet's Conquest Mission Terminal.

Add in an option to use components to purchase requisition grants? That would tie them into GSF's gearing of ship parts / upgrades (it doesn't use player gear or the class ship's gear but it does have its own system of gear!), and it's a lot more obvious and straightforward than trying to shoehorn in some sort of weird way for GSF to start pulling stats from player gear for something. Although to be fair, they could have just as easily offered this option with Fleet Comms. Hmmmm... Remove the Fleet Comms and change current fleet comm rewards to components... Add option to obtain GSF requisition grants with components... Change current fleet comm vendor for the forgotten solo on-rails space mission gear to ask for components instead... This sounding like a reasonable idea? GSF and solo space missions would then be integrated into the same reward system as at least some other parts of the game (side note: I agree with sentiments throughout this topic that it would be nice to see PVE options with component rewards too), and GSF's gear grind could seem a little less daunting to newcomers since they could just throw some spare components in to get some extra requisition to spend on upgrades.

The set bonus will go wherever the armoring piece goes.

Yep. Might as well just offer the choice. It would also be a nice touch to add options where it doesn't already cover every conceivable option and to perhaps even see about adding brand new options as well. So we'd see a list like someone else mentioned, with options grayed out after you've completed them that day or if you haven't unlocked them yet. And aside from each planet having an entry for its heroics, the list would also have entries for Black Hole, Section X, CZ-198, Oricon, Yavin, GSI-Makeb, GSI-Alderaan, GSI-Tatooine, GSI-Hoth, new GSI stuff for other planets, restored on-planet Belsavis dailies, restored Ilum dailies, Makeb's non-GSI dailies, Rishi dailies (with a terminal added next to the one daily mission's NPC (downstairs in the cantina) for easy access to all of the other Rishi dailies), and anything new they could think to add like new GSI style dailies or new on-planet dailies. (And anything I forgot to mention.) Maybe also add entries in the list corresponding to each event (obviously they'd be grayed out when the event is not running). (Gree option teleports you to the right place on Ilum and asks for completion of some non-pvp Gree dailies, 3 separate Rakghoul options to teleport to the THORN base on the correct planet and they each ask for that planet's on-planet event daily along with some tunnel dailies, and then the Bounty Week option only teleports to the pick-up on fleet but it asks for completion of both a henchmen and a kingpin.) Hmmm... a thought for all of this... Each mission from GC for a set of basic on-planet dailies would be set to reward bottom tier CXP since they would contain no heroics. Most of the ones for the proper dailies zones and for the GSI stuff would be a middle tier CXP reward since those generally have one heroic mixed in. And then the ones for several heroics would typically be the highest reward because they're all heroics. Except maybe make the capital planets' heroics worth a middle tier CXP reward and add an option for your class's starter planet heroic(s) but it's actually worth less than the bottom tier CXP reward.

It's got to be that. The setting is off by default and stored separately for each character, so it's something to remember to check on every character if you want all of the missions to be visible on all of them. It was part of the streamlining with 4.0 that shifted the focus to class story (and maybe some mix of planet and flashpoint story) being (more than) enough to level a character all the way up, with those sources specially marked in purple to set them apart from regular missions. Many of the sidequest missions (although not all of them) got their icon changed to have a star over it which marks it as an "exploratory mission". I don't know why some got this designation and some didn't. It's not like it's marking dailies/weeklies or anything like that. It's marking one-time missions just the same as the sidequests that didn't get updated to be marked like this... Anyway, the idea is of course that sidequests are now an optional thing that you can choose to do if you want to explore a planet some more.

Honestly, I was surprised at the launch of strongholds that they didn't do this and that they instead just made a few generic currency tokens for us to craft and spend on decorations. It just gives the decoration side of crafting zero personality. You've got the one token that 3 of the skills can make. You've got the other token that the other 3 skills can make. You've got 2 additional components that anybody can make. And you've got the last token which anybody can make by combining the previous 4 items. (Well, all of that split up into 3 different tiers of those items.) So you don't make decorations, you make a stockpile of currency and you browse a vendor to see what you can buy with that currency. You probably aren't generally going to be crafting with a specific decoration in mind because that requires knowing which fabricator droid sells which item and for which tier of the currency. You just make a token here or there to burn off some stockpiled materials and then maybe eventually you notice that you have several tokens stockpiled and you wonder what you can trade them all for. And then they piled the conquest crafting in on top of this, all globbed together as one big mess of a category in our crafting windows. With 3 of the skills making 2 of the smaller war supplies, 2 of the skills making another 2 of the smaller war supplies, the last skill making 1 last type of smaller war supply, and anybody being able to combine those 5 into 1 great big war supply. (And you have a few alternative crafting schematics to make each small war supply out of different tiers of the base material (changed now to making them out of different tiers of the assembly components / bonded attachments / cell grafts after that crafting revamp.)) And then all 6 of the war supplies might as well just be junk items for all the use they are after they've been made. The smaller ones go into the big one, the big one goes into a dark project, and the dark project can buy 2 very limited-use perks (one purely cosmetic as I understand it) for guilds to use ONLY on a planet that they've won and ONLY in the week after they won it... or the dark project can be used with the highest tier of universal prefab to buy decorations that look like the class ships...

The old group finder had been a bit of a mess from trying to organize around level 50, 55, and 60 hard modes. But I have felt since the release of the revamped format that they never should have done away with minimum level requirements to queue for flashpoints. It should have continued to just enable them as players reach the level for them, as you said. And they only needed to remove the maximum level. Keeping all options available forever after they become available. So as you'd level up the options in the story/tactical queue would expand bit by bit until you have the full list available, and hard modes as well would get certain options added at 50, 55, 60, etc. until you have that full list available as well. On top of that, I also always felt like max level bolster should not have been the answer at all. They should have instead made use of level sync for all of them. Sync the story/tactical flashpoints to a fairly lenient target, like 4-5 levels higher than the flashpoint's level or something like that. And sync the hard mode flashpoints no more than 1-2 levels over the flashpoint's level to make the requirements stricter compared to story/tactical mode. Only consider using bolster if it can be uniquely configured for each flashpoint's specific level to meet a bare minimum requirement equivalent to cheap gear for that level. Freeing up the roles to be free form was kind of a necessity for convenience to help queue times, although it can create bad matchups... Honestly, the solution that I'll suggest uses something that was added long after the group finder revamp but I would think that people would manage just fine if the game provided some sort of generic toolset on the temporary ability bar for all players in a tactical flashpoint, giving us abilities along the lines of what they eventually came up with for Heroic Star Fortresses and other content released throughout KotFE / KotET. (In particular, if each player could place down a high-threat turret like the one from the Heroic Star Fortresses, a team without a tank could kind of fake their way through an encounter that otherwise benefits from having a tank in the team.) And yeah, it's weird that Colicoid War Games and Kaon Under Siege and... Was there another? I thought there were a few of them? But it's weird that a few specific flashpoints were left out from getting changed to tactical. They were left floating around as their original story mode with outdated rewards and at their original level, no sync or bolster.

The planetary option in Galactic Command covers both heroics and dailies. It would be nice, however, to have an interface there to just select what you want instead of getting one randomly chosen for you (and then rejecting / canceling it and asking for a new random selection if you want to try to get something else). And from what I've seen when clicking on it, it does seem like it might be missing a few of the options that it could be covering. I mean, it covers all planetary heroics from Coruscant / Dromund Kaas to Corellia (and I acknowledge that the lack of starter planet heroics in that is because those are just too quick and easy), and it covers the standard dailies areas like Section X, CZ-198, Oricon, and Yavin. Probably Black Hole too but I don't know that I've seen it come up. But I know that I have not seen Rishi dailies come up (although those would need a mission box added for a one-stop pickup, which I would propose should be located downstairs in the cantina (don't include the daily that starts and ends down there on the terminal, we'll just talk to the guy), haven't been there in 5.0 but I'm pretty sure those dailies are still just scattered about with no option to pick them all up in one place). And they could also consider adding back in the removed Ilum and Belsavis dailies that were lost in 4.0 and feature those as well. And on top of that they could also have a GSI dailies option for each of the planets that include them (and maybe add GSI to a few more planets as well).

I haven't seen this personally but I've heard that enough people have been backed up on that mission before that they were able to form an ops group to destroy him. (Too bad for the majority of that ops group that credit for non-ops content only goes to the 4 players in the same subsection of the ops frame as the one who got the first hit.)

Outside of Diablo 3, what non-MMOs force you to connect online to play single player? ... Xenoblade on Wii U, I suppose. I don't know if it actually forces you to be online but it does connect for some random side feature. Anything else? There's soloable stuff in swtor and that has definitely always been a selling point of swtor over a more traditional MMO (although I guess others have their share of soloable stuff too?) But I'm not really seeing "online single player" as its own standalone gaming genre.

When I paid for digital deluxe that's what I thought that it was. Just the in-game portion of the collector's edition package. (Obviously the actual collector's edition had a bunch of out-of-game extras as well. Let's be honest, the price tag wasn't so much on that thing because of in-game VIP lounge access, it cost as much as it did because of the Malgus statue (and to a lesser extent also the CD, the metal game case, and an exclusive book.)) Why would it be anything different, right? There's absolutely no reason to expect it to count as something different. So of course I was annoyed when I found that all that digital deluxe opened up access to was a vendor with one overpriced crappy speeder while the vendor with the stuff that someone might actually want refused to talk. A couple thoughts: 1) The lesser vendor should have had lots of stuff on it as well, keeping in mind of course that the selection would still be better on the better vendor. There's just no reason to care about VIP access if it doesn't actually count for anything. And the way they handled it VIP only counts for something if you got in because of the physical collector's box. 2) The lesser vendor is obviously accessible to all VIP users whether they paid credits on one character to get in or if they paid real money to have access on all characters. But the better vendor should be accessible to all VIP users who paid real money to have access. Granted, just as there is that 1 pet that collector's edition users get mailed to them that digital deluxe users do not get (1 digital perk out of the 7 total digital perks that users can get), there could be 1-3 vendor items (to be fair, maybe counting a full gear set as "1 item") that only the actual collector's edition users could get as well. But that's the maximum amount of difference that there should be between the digital perks of the two real money paid options.

Random thought I had when they were rehashing the upcoming gearing change: Add unassembled components into flashpoints / uprisings and maybe even some solo content as well. (Being careful about the number and trying to match (or hit a target just slightly slower than) the pace of earning the components from warzones, of course.) It wouldn't nullify ops as a fast-tracked option since it's only for the components, not a full unassembled piece. The solo and non-ops group PVE content would fit in as a slower grind just the same as PVP will.