Signed also. When I was tanking, I'd easily lose track of my cursor in the chaos when trying to select a specific mob to pester. Or at least have it flashing or animated in a sense that it's detectable.

I installed Wine Staging on my 17.10 Ubuntu, running on an "aged" i7 970 (6-core, 3.2GHz) system with 24GB RAM, but with an AMD RX480 8GB card (open source drivers) & then installed SWTOR on it. If you disable the Bitraider (as OP suggested), the game downloads and installs normally without any additional programs - just the default. I noticed that there are issues with the mouse rolling around the camera really fast, but that can be fixed if you select the "Grab mouse" option & give a dedicated desktop to Wine (which I placed as my full screen resolution) in the winecfg. I did notice the white screen on the cinematics, so I might install DirectX for it - if it indeed fixes the issue. Or might not, since the game works beautifully. The in-game performance is really great to be honest (better than my previous Windows experience), though cut-scenes tend to suffer in frame-rate if you place your mouse pointer outside of the screen. If you keep it inside (or at a corner where it's still visible), the frame-rate is flawless with literally everything maxed out. Tomorrow I'm having a Corsair Scimitar mouse arriving, so I'll give that a shot and see how it performs under Wine (I'm not running Windows at all). My "normal" gaming mouse (with the extra couple side buttons 4 & 5 to the side) is normally recognized without anything additional. In general, besides some minor character-flashes when I'm travelling with the big "car" around Coruscant (through the fast travel droids), everything else works perfectly (minus the white videos). As a side note, I tried the same with an old laptop running on an 1.7GHz i7, 8GB RAM and a 240M nVidia and -with reduced graphics settings- it runs great as well (same video issue). Actually, better than it did when I ran Win 10 believe it or not. Also, as an up-point, running SWTOR on Linux keeps my network free of Windows' usual patching and background applications hammering my internet connection when they feel like it. It's nice to keep those lag spikes to a minimum. :-)

For many people that I've talked to, this FP is a game breaker. I will bypass all the aspects, which are OK generally speaking, and I will focus on two major aspects; something I believe many other members have spoken about since Shadow of Revan came out. 1. Jos & Valk fight (all of it) 2. Vizla - Torch fight (ground mechanics) Number 1... ...is simply sadistic. There is no other word I can find and I have to thank a fellow player for this description. It is spot on. The fight is not only crazy bugged (the bosses reset at will), but it is nerve wrecking. Especially Jos behaves erratically, casting his abilities in a total random way. Example: start battle, instantly maul one player while kicking the 2nd off the platform; then continue with other 3 consequent mauls. That's the "good morning" of the fight. So the question is... run for the kolto tank (if you're lucky and your cc-breaker works) or will he burst some brain vessels and kick you off half way? Having a tank in this fight is simply a curse, especially when I find myself in tactical without a healer. Many of my characters (I'm sub and I do have a considerable amount of them) have either totally skipped Shadow of Revan or will skip it, just because of this FP. In my sage, I've had over 4 resets in this fight with a companion and goodness knows how many reports I made about the bugs since Revan came out. Nothing has been done. Solo FP? Don't use tank/dps melee companion. You risk years of your life in resets. Not literally, but you get the point. Number 2... ...the ground mechanics are simply bad. The floor opens up to the flames. You sit on a normal platform and you still get the burn effect. You have to move to a new covered tile, but until then, a good deal of damage is done. In addition, when Vizla farts herself sky-high and rains down the rockets, it doesn't matter if you're on the platform or orbiting planet Mars. You will sustain at least 50-70% of the rockets, no matter where you are on the map, no matter how fast you can move out. Those are not rockets, they are nuclear devices! Please do change the ground radius of the AoE so that we know that her attack covers half the island please. This has been reported as well. Nothing changed. In any case, with Number 2 I can live with. But Number 1 is simply a disgrace. It's long, frustrating and worthless. And as a fellow player said, the designer must be a sadist. And he is right. Last but not least, dear owners of SWTOR, there is a huge number of players out there that does not have 10-11ms response rate. Instead of workarounds that make our characters act like they're electrocuted (try to spam your attack key on a guardian for example), please do consider a decent input/output algorithm. This will solve a lot of problems. Please forgive my ranting. I had to make a public point since all my reports ended up in the garbage.

I'm with you on this one. Imagine your description and advance it to level 2, where nobody speaks English (EU server) and there can be no communication! Take it to level 3 with the occasional marauder/sentinel who charges forward in the middle of all mobs. Since one of my favorite aspects is tanking, you can get the feeling. The opportunities are endless! ;-)

I've had numerous weird experiences in GF, so I've kind of grown either immune or not too patient. Unless the people can communicate respectfully. In that case, I spend the time even with newbies to explain all tactics and give them tips. As an "oldie", I enjoy making new players feel welcome. But their communication skills are a must. Which brings me to my story (one out of countless). Tactical, Assault on Tython. I entered with my new Guardian Tank. Fresh level 65, full basic 65 gear with augments. Just needed to finish the weekly. Groupies were another Guardian DPS, a gunslinger (I think) and another Vanguard tank. I think the Vanguard's level was capped, since he had 65k health (pre-lvl 65 usually get health between 55k-60k when boosted), so I thought of asking him for me to do the tanking, since I had 78k. As the three of us, minus the Vanguard zoned in and said our hellos, the Vanguard started being a gutter-mouth toward the gunslinger, claiming he (the gunslinger) was harassing him (the Vanguard) through several "makeshift" characters. A flame war was launched before we even began with a kick request from the Vanguard to throw out the gunslinger. What a great way to start a FP! The other poor Guardian was just staying silent, dumbfounded. I apologized and explained that I am not fond of drama, so I left before we began. Funny thing is that the next FPs were Red Reaper & Korriban, both of which had 2 people that came in as first timers. We communicated as human beings and I explained the tactics. Everything went smoothly. My point being is that everything can be solved through good communication and understanding. Just show some class, people! :-)

Running the resource monitor on one screen and SWTOR on the other, the report difference was vast. Resource Monitor (connection to SWTOR server): 210ms In Game Latency Report: 140,156ms (best result was 586ms | worst, game was non responsive) I'm connecting to Ebon Hawk from Europe and I generally get 156ms latency. The past half hour it has been like I'm attempting a call to Pluto. I even have to wait for 2+ minutes past the login screen for the "Play" button to activate.

Greetings, As a tank-oriented player, I would like to make a suggestion regarding an interface option. Since tanks tend to gather a lot of "partying" mobs the screen can become quite hectic. In the past I used to prefer shadow/assassin tanking as I could throw in the AoEs and not worry too much. However, with the latest improvements, I started switching to other tanking classes more. I believe that my recommendations can offer some good help, while keeping things tidy and simple. Keeping it Simple I tend to map my main abilities to my mouse and pre-set keyboard configurations, so I very rarely click on something. For this case, I noticed that when I hide the UI, my eyes feel A LOT rested. However, I do miss ONLY two things: 1st - My Cooldowns 2nd- My Focus/Rage meter Suggestion: 1st- If there was an option to make cooldowns on abilities pop or at least scale up to make them visible on the corner of our eye, it would be very helpful. This could be resolved with a dedicated bar (for cooldowns only). 2nd- If we could have a Focus/Rage/Force bar below our health bar on our Nameplate, that would be great. We need to know what we're targetting In the chaos of battle with numerous mobs, one cannot tell where the little "pointer" of the next target lies and clicking can't happen fast enough. I'd recommend "Auras". Strong (or customizable) outlines for targets that we can target. For example, strong red for our main target, yellow for the next target and green-ish for the 3rd target. Also, it would be great for the "next" target option to not select mobs that are very close to the edge of the screen. I tried using the "target closest enemy", but it requries a lot of rotation and can't select that usual mob that is half a meter behind the one you're attacking. I hope you will consider the above and if anyone has any additions and/or feedback, I'll be happy for the input. I strongly believe the above will also offer some help with single-target oriented dps as well. EDIT: Also, after the "Cooldown Bar", it would be great if we could have an "Optimal Bar", which would pop ability warnings when they become available (ie flashing), such as Riposte/Retaliation etc.

After over a year absense from Star Wars: The Old Republic, I finally made a choice to return and see how it has progressed so far. In general my opinion is positive, though still some troubles still remain. But I won't face anything on a negative perspective, but try to give a positive outlook instead. I believe what I may suggest will be welcome to other players, as well as add something good in terms of functionality and overall experience. Quickbar Response & Queue: Since most abilities are not exactly 1sec cast and there is no auto-attack option, the global cooldown isn't exactly the best way to anticipate when the next ability will be available to cast / use. Therefore I recommend a queue tab, where a player can record up to 3 abilities in-line (like a flash over temporary bar) with a wipe effect to indicate the timer of that ability. That should apply for the attack ones. The reason for this suggestion is that especially when it comes to melee units, the UI tends to go out of sync. I've found, once too many times, my melee tanks having big trouble using an ability, which has led me into tapping the keys more than a few times. In return, I'm seeing the animation reset on each tap and the ability not eventually casting. An ability queue might give a good visual as to what's happening, especially when a situation turns chaotic and some abilities fail to cast. Mental - Internal Resistance Attributes This is something that I believe is vital. So far I've only encountered resistances to armor/damage reduction. But as a tank, I tend to pick up some talents that say "increases internal/mental resistance by x%", but I have no idea the level of that resistance. Especially in higher levels, where mobs tend to cast a plethora of DoTs that create different stacks, the amount of incoming damage at times is unreal. A level 46 mob (personal storyline, Sith Juggernaut) on Voss does severely greater damage in absolute numbers than level 54 Makeb elites. At a point where I had to face two of them, their DoTs stack differently, delivering approximately 2.4k of damage per tick. I tend to believe that any armor level do not have any application to the internal/mental resistances, and I have no way of seeing what my resistances are on these aspects. Hence when I receive DoT stacks on me, my guardian tank tends to bleed health as if he was wearing nothing but level 1 pyjamas on! Besides this, I believe that a unification of DoT types is in order, to avoid having different mobs cast different stacks of them. It's ok to have a stack of each (i.e. bleedingx2 or x3). I've reached as far as having 4 of x3 stacks of burning, which even my out-of-combat healing couldn't overcome. I see that this has been nicely fixed on Makeb. Makeb Level Differences: I believe there is a significant power gap from the previous planets and Makeb. A fresh off-the-boat character that finished his/her personal story on a free account at level 50, will soon reach a frustration level when creating a subscription to enter Makeb. The reason is that the enemies increase in level faster than a character with rested experience. My first effort at Makeb came with my Sage, who was Columi/Rakata geared. She had a ton of rest xp to use, but it wasn't long before she would be level 51 and face level 54 mobs in some cases. The most usual scenario would be facing enemies, including elites 2 levels above. Poorly geared characters (from quest rewards) will simply have no chance on that planet. My recommendation is one of the two: 1st Drastically increase the experience amount gained on the planet... ...or give players alternatives to gain levels that will make the game worthwhile playing. Even this far, I had no idea of several planets' bonus series, until I saw it in the group finder (nice addtion by the way). And I still visited those planets and couldn't find the bonus quest givers. Some things need to become more obvious and not remain hidden in some remote corner of the republic/imperial fleet. or 2nd Improve quest rewards... ...as what they currently give (pre-Makeb) is simply the absolute minimum that doesn't even guarantee survival on simple encounters. Ever since the adaptive armor and the beautiful alterations on the commendations system (thank you for that), I believe that the quest reward system has somewhat become obsolete. Make the armor stats competitive, so that the player would have to think twice before blindly selecting the commendation. At this point, I only check the mission reward gear stats to compare with my current one. If they start getting close, then it's time for an upgrade. I never, ever select any gear for my character that comes from a normal quest. Unlocking quest objective mobs This is something I encountered in Guild Wars 2, which I believe is a huge breakthrough in quest running. Star Wars already has incredible levels of grinding, which is something that turns a lot of people off, including myself. As a tank, that I usually play, I either have to swallow having to kill galaxies of mobs to get the extra bit of experience or risk falling behind and entering my next storyline mission, facing enemies that will multi-DoT stack me into oblivion. In several multi-stage bonus objectives, you have done the great job of having a key-activation object that triggers the final boss. If that can be done for all quest objectives (i.e. require a minimum damage input), everyone can participate in quests without having to go into the grouping process or having to wait for an enormous amount of time for some respawns to occur. So far, I've seen you've done some admirable job on some quest item respawns, but some problems (especially with elite mob quest objectives) still remain. In short, I'm suggesting an open-group quest objectives, where anyone can participate, and have a minimum participation parameter (i.e. damage/healing done or damage received / participation time) for additional people to have a quest completion or mob kill experience. Bonus / new mission notifications Since many people don't tend to travel to planets they already finished (or think they have finished), it would be nice to have a communications device inside the player's ship that makes them aware that this planet or that planet could use further assistance. Until this past week, the only bonus missions I was aware of were the ones that the quest giver catches you before you take off (except Nar Shaddaa, where at times one of your companions sends you there). Well, that's it for now. I'm sorry if I have made people tired of my long post. As you can see from my above descriptions, I strongly believe that I place my emphasis on the following catefories: 1. User Interface integrity, responsiveness and ease of use 2. Visibility of attributes, so that I am aware what comes from where and what I'm able to resist against (or not) 3. Ability to be aware of what is going on in the galaxy, quest wise. It's a futuristic world where everyone has communication devices. Having to run and search for hidden quest givers (for the bonus series), when they -themselves- say that your character is the best thing that happened to their planet (but they failed to give you a call when they needed you), leaves many of us unaware. Again, thank you for your time, and I hope my input can be food for thought.

All I can say is that many people in my guild have disappeared. I played several storylines and ended up with quite a few capped characters and a level 34 legacy. In short, I've had enough leveling. I do remember seeing Coruscant having 119 - 130 people on my server, not counting the peaks of 180. Now it's 60 during peak. Those are the normal numbers in my EU RP server. This means only one thing... population is dying and that's that. But don't expect server merges. It looks bad for the sharks! Currently all I am doing is just stand and wait for someone to pop up to do a Flashpoint (if I'm lucky) as I get tired of the constant warzones. At times they can be mildly distracting, but when the super-pros/farm-squads come up, it's no use. Point being, I am bored to death. Where are the guild banks that were supposed to be in from day one? We're mailing things to each other and keep on asking "what is it you do?"... Guild management is down the gutter, so I won't expand on that. Just the fact that we have to rely on external website forums to even be able to communicate shows the magnitude of this design failure. Crafting system? The missions were a good idea, but the higher your level is, the more useless it becomes. Only Biochem can actually be really useful... well so far. Synthweaving & Armormech? Beyond useless! Get an orange schematic to build an item that makes people gain the same look they had 30 levels back!... Get today the look of your dreams! A level 20 cape that requires a level 50 character to wear it! Preposterous!... Artifice? It's all about Christmas lights and maybe an enhancement after tons of reverse engineering! Cybertech? So and so. I can't speak for the rest as I don't have much experience with them. Groups? I'll try not to laugh here! After the third planet, they are a rarity. A group finder (like the pvp one) would be very handy, but it's nowhere to be found. Nobody cares about the heroics lately. Go to Hoth, Balmorra (Rep), Voss, Corellia, Belsavis and see if anyone is actually doing anything. No. Even the Illum & Belsavis dailies are undermanned just for the commendations and the money. Speaking about money... Repairs and costs? Better not get into a Hard Mode Flashpoint without being super expert from the first try or this will cost you an arm, a leg and the rest of your family repair wise. That's a big reason tanks that are not familiar with it are very hesitant to enter the HMs. High costs bring nagging and the experience DIES right there. The counter-paybacks from flashpoints are trash. My vanguard tank got broke by doing only Flashpoints (with minimal deaths on first attempts). EVEN WHEN I AM ON VENDORS with a freshly repaired gear and I put something NEW on, IT REQUIRES A NEW REPAIR! What the heck? Did a toxic bug splash on the newly acquired gear as I was putting it on? No wonder people are going on PvP for gear. PvE is a forbidden and badly designed part. Not to mention the missing group finders for PvE (they exist only for PvP). I won't go into any further details but I could go on and on as many other people could too. I was looking forward to the 1.2 patch, but will it make the game more functional? New UI will be nice (I beta tested it), but I don't feel like farming the living hell out of everything to buy a new ability that my legacy will allow. The race unlocks are a fail. Many people were expecting some new races from the SW universe, not an "opportunity" to play Sith and Rep counterparts on the opposing sides. Basically this game lacks major functionality. It's just a good -still underdeveloped- beta game and up to that. The only reason I am in at the moment is because I am a guild master and I have to give courage to my dozens of guild mates to be around. Other than that, people are not returning, or are returning for a month at most. Scattered a day here and perhaps a day there, but to EA all it matters is the month money. So, does the 1.2 sound interesting any more? Sure we'll enjoy the textures and the new voice overs on the same campaigns and yes, we'll get to line up our characters as the father and mother and sister and friend and anything else only to unlock abilities that will cost us a planet or two to buy... operative word in all of this being "buy". The textures had to be changed as some character elements had a tremendously low resolution that reminded me of over-compressed tiny JPGs. In my line of work there's the rule of "under-promise and over-deliver" which makes people happy. In this case, we've been hearing so much about the 1.2 patch and for an extended period of time, which falls into the "over-promise" part. And this can only lead to an "under-deliver" that will make many people unhappy. I work in the production & advertising industry and this has been one really bad promotion planning. And this "under-delivery" is becoming an industry standard. If they're going for our money, let them keep running I say. During the 80ies, the player compromised, nowdays the player demands. And if we are to get anything better, we have to stop accepting trash. Simple as that! To all those that are not fanbois (or paid copywriters - I know they're here too as it's part of their job description... and they tend to be the first to "bite") forgive me for my long ranting. It's my big cry before I make up my mind about something... and it's really sad to see my in-game help window packed with dozens of bug reports only to discover most of them still exist on other places. As I've mentioned in the past, this game required at least another 6 months of development and testing. Bottom line, I no longer care when the 1.2 comes out. I'm just fed up with all the amateur advertising and copywriting tricks around it. This is not the 90's people! That kind of promotion is DEAD! Thank you all for your time!

I have a couple of dozen multi-bug reports on my mail, which is sad. It appears that the game was rushed for the Christmas market and problems got "patched" up and burried. If one has an eye for detail, they can easily be spotted. It's a shame really as there are many basic features that are not there. I have 4 lvl50 characters (plus two more @ 32 & 37 that I don't have the courage to cap) and at the moment I am simply looking at the screen and chatting with my guildies (because many people have left and we have hard time getting groups etc) and/or helping them out. This game needed 6 more months of intensive beta testing. The basic database has still namespace issues, which shows that things were released before they were supposed to.

Sorry for the intervention, but the loading times caught my eye. Under 5 seconds? In an old computer? You must be playing warzone after warzone and perhaps a flashpoint from time to time. Those are the fast loading ones, yes. CPU wise, games mostly use a single core. They are not multi threaded, so basically there's very little benefit from a modern processor in the gaming world. My system is an i7 970 @ 3.2GHz with 24Gigs of DDR3, 2x580 GTX and the game runs from a secondary SSD (my system works only with Solid State Drives). The OS is pretty light on its installed software and I still get 10-15sec load in all worlds. Ship, warzones, fleet are the exceptions. Even flashpoints take longer than 5sec. Keep in mind that I have hyperthreading off (it makes a big difference). Therefore my conclusion is that there has to be a coding issue. I have Rift for example that loads an entire world in under 1sec, plus 1 more for data transfer to the GFX card and that's it. I believe the game's 32bit architecture may be hitting bottlenecks with 64bit systems. At times I've encountered memory leaks (exceeding the 2048MB barrier) and the FPS drop down to 20-30... from 110!

I have seen companions do the strangest things ever. For example the Padawan (can't remember the name) of my Sith Juggernaut (the companion you take after Act 1). I attacked a group of three normal mobs and she took off and attacked ANOTHER group, totally different (that was not in combat) some 50 meters away! Talk about amoeba-brain! And no, I did not order her to do anything. /Begin Healer comp rampage! LoL My favorite in the realms of stupidity is -by endless light years- Tharan Cendrax! That "genius" smashes all records of deficiency, as do most healer companions to be honest. What do I mean? Ever wondered why at times the healer just shoots instead of healing? Because he/she (especially "he") decides that he/she is within range of the mob, but never thought that you might require healing and just stays really far away showing off his/her level 1 super dps! At that point, I have to lose time to MANUALLY put them to passive mode so that they move to a more appropriate range. Moments that in some fights can be critical. But manual control of the companion is NOT always possible. That's why -in my personal experience- the super Amoeba prize goes to Tharan! That "genius" doesn't want to have as much as a piece of dust on his coat. So when he decides to heal himself (at the slightest cut mind you), he disobeys everything. And I mean EVERYTHING! During a class quest on Belsavis, a droid boss pulls him and me close up with some minor damage (which escalates). I IMMEDIATELY put him on passive as I move away and he decides to heal himself ignoring EVERYTHING for 3-4 seconds. Result? He dies on his second arrogant attempt to heal himself for 600 points as he takes a massive 4k hit! Hail the king of Amoebas! The achievements of the Amoeba King do not stop here though! LoL... One other major achievement is the following: I disable one mob (under stealth) and I attack the rest of the group. While I am fighting (and Tharan is at a good distance), he heals me. Once I kill the non-cc'd mobs and there's only the cc'd one remaining, Tharan ceases ALL healing operations (even though I am far from full health and still in combat) and decides to strike a James Bond pose. Since the cc'd mob is part of the group, I cannot exit combat unless I "vanish". So, instead of taking the time to heal, he poses for the ladies, which I find very annoying. The only way for him to continue healing is if I engage in combat or the mob wakes up and starts ravaging! /End of Healer comp rampage! To the above, especially the distance issue, is also found on Doc. Keep in mind though that for some other healers (i.e. Maco, Elara etc), they have to encounter the same situation for the problem to appear and I suspect that all healer companions are based on the same AI subroutines. Last but not least is my favorite Lizard companion (on my sage). There are many times when I tell him to attack and he simply runs up to the enemy. Yep, he just runs and at some point he realizes that I pressed the attack button, backs off in the middle of nowhere and then draws his weapon. That's another 2-3 sec delay due to deficient AI. Not to mention that many times he just decides to ignore the leap command and just walks up to the mobs he's supposed to be attacking (even when he has all the space in the world to perform a galactic proportions leap). Nadia appears to be the only one that is more "prompt" to her commands at the moment. With my Juggernaut or my Sentinel, I think twice before going on a force leap as my healers may decide I'm too far away and sit back to enjoy the show with a can of beer. Those are the issues I've seen so far from my characters and I believe that the companion AI still has some important issues that require fine tuning.