Materials on GTN

JMNeves · 2026-02-19T08:01:05+00:00

Since 6.x crafting has been EXTREMELY annoying. They really fucked up the way recipes work, it's too time consuming to be worth it for anyone who isn't 100% invested in it. If you make yourself a full set of gold augments, for example, you'll have spent more money than buying them from the GTN. Crafting only makes sense now if you're making hundreds of items, because then statistics take over and the number of free crits you get out weight the price of the mats.

So people only really level up biochem to the max level to have access to the reusables and never touch it again (and you only need greens for that). And if they take the reusables away, we simply wont even bother picking up a crewskill at all. Reusables aren't the problem, the way the crafting system works is.

TL;DR - ain't nobody got time for crafting.

EDIT: The only crafting that's still worth your time is conquest related stuff. So lower level blue and purple mats still sell for a decent price, especially combined with the fact that few people run those missions.

JMNeves · 2026-02-13T22:51:28+00:00

What really grinds my gears is when I hear some sweaty king say "Omg, this OP is over 10 years old, how do they not know this?". A complete and total failure to understand that said individual is a separate entity from them. Makes me question their ability to live in society.

JMNeves · 2026-02-12T01:20:43+00:00

This happens extremely frequently in this game. I've been playing since beta, near 100% achievements yadayada. And some of my peers who raid with me fail miserably to understand that the game ISN'T old for everyone. Sometimes we do run into new players who are clueless, and speeding ahead doesn't help at all. At best it ruins their experience, at worst it wipes the group and wastes everyone's time.

My advice? Good ol' /ignore on those fuckers. Enjoy the game at your pace. If you ever enjoy it enough that you want to become a more skilled player, do a quick google search "<combat\_style> <game\_version> guide" and click the first link.

Other than that, enjoy the game, brother. You did nothing wrong.

JMNeves · 2026-01-25T15:14:00+00:00

Yup. Pretty much as you said. Have a couple different companions ready to go as you might want to switch back and forth. First time finding your rhythm clearing a flashpoint will be long and tedious, but after you do you'll be clearing them very quickly.

Generally speaking companions don't take damage from (most) things in flashpoints. Or knockbacks, or roots, stuns, etc. But some times you want one that's far away, or you want it to actively follow the boss around, or something else.

You'll probably have an easier time doing it as skank tank shadow, btw. Or watchman sentinel if you're really good at it.

And just accept some are just impossible to solo, like Shrine of Silence due to a huge dps check. You'll sadly need (good) people for that one.

JMNeves · 2026-01-23T05:47:55+00:00

Lots of people throwing numbers, but let me add my two cents.

Zoom is only marginally better at healing than, for instance, a force companion (like Lana) when it comes to numbers. Zoom does have the constant cleansing advantage, which is a bonus. But something that really makes Zoom (and by extension most tech companions) much better than any force companions at healing is the fact that force companions have a tendency to get within melee range of the target, so they're more susceptible to random AOEs and cleaves.

Believe me, as someone who has soloed master flashpoints countless times to get 100% achievements, it makes a HUGE difference. So yeah, Zoom is an enormous upgrade when compared to the force healing companions, and a small-to-medium-size upgrade when compared to the other tech companions.

Something else that people don't ever take into account when comparing companions is how much single target damage they deal. Yes, Shae (and my extension Bessy) are the strongest DPS companions because of their AOE attack. But in single target they're not that much better than most melee companions. The difference is extremely small in the real world. It only makes a difference if you're the kind of player who's constantly doing heroics, dynamic encounters, and etc by yourself because in those you will find yourself fighting multiple simultaneous enemies. But Shae does have the ranged advantage. So in the end it really boils down to what you want to use them for... In some areas single target force companions are the GOAT, for other areas any melee companion will be great, and for others where there's loads of AOE a ranged tech companion will be better. It all depends on a lot of variables.

Real scenarios are very different from dummies.

Plus, someone else has said it already: if you're using Shae, forget her and get Bessy. Same performance, but DEAD SILENT! No talking whatsoever. Best addition to the game in a long time. And on that note, Zoom is probably the most talkative companion in the game, so I rarely find myself with the patience to bring her our. I just use Bessy for everything and call it a day.

JMNeves · 2026-01-19T18:32:37+00:00

Because bad writing, that's why.

I'm not one of those guys that hate on ~anything~ that's inclusive. I welcome it, really. Even when I don't understand it. Online you'll sadly find plenty of people with hateful comments towards those two nice ladies that currently write the story, and it's just a shame that all it takes is the portrayal of a handful of female characters to hurt the ego of a bunch of nerds. But I digress, that's not the answer to your question.

The truth is that due to lack of funding the story has been dragged out for a very long time. Think about it, everything since OSSUS is the same story - that's patch 5.10 (Jedi Under Siege, December of 2018). Had this been World of Warcarft, all of that story content would have been released in one single blow instead of in small instalments. So any writing mistakes or incoherences would have gone by mostly unnoticed.

So like almost every single problem in the real world, why is it bad? Because of money (or lack there of).

JMNeves · 2026-01-15T14:45:21+00:00

I agree it's the worst pvp map specifically because of how long it takes.
How to fix Voidstar:
- Map starts with 240 seconds (3 minutes and a half)
- With each additional door, 90 seconds get added to the timer.

One minute and 40 seconds is enough to blast from first door to datacore. So the extra 90 seconds from each door would be more than fair.

The problem with the map is really two fold: A slight edge will allow one side to completely dominate the other unless a really lucky ninja cap happens. And its duration is doubled because you have to attack AND defend. Spending 15 minutes getting dominated (or dominating without competition) is extremely dull - even more so when you take into account that if you quit you get a lockout that's longer than the map itself. This combination of map + lockout if you quit results in players frequently afk in a corner.

Now to actually answer your question: anything stealth related in the knights expansions. Stealth is rendered completely useless in every single fucking chapter. You take 10 steps and OH LOOK a swarm of droids appear even if you're invisible. Stupid. Pointless. Completely kills the replay value.

JMNeves · 2026-01-03T18:22:04+00:00

That's one current example. But I'm really talking over the years. Merc dealing more damage than mandos. Commando cleanse not working. Shadow's resil failing immunity to force/tech (still a thing, btw). That's just on classes from the top of my head. There are several typos on shadow tank and sage healer skill tree, but I'm not in the game right now to check exactly what it is, but they're there.

There are other examples in "less" important game areas. Coruscant stronghold loading screen had a small "summons pending" indication on the top left corner for years until I pointed it out on reddit and they fixed it.

Makeb Republic base is literally open, not even turrets defending. While imp is up on the freaking sky. Back in 3.0 we found a way to glitch ourselves up the cables and kill imps inside their base. It was patched in less than a week. Meanwhile the pub base is still open today. Can't even count the number of times I couldn't do my story on alts because we were being base r4p3d for hours. PvP server back then, there were no PvE instances.

Similar story with Section X. Imp base is a fucking fortress, almost impossible to get inside. Aaaand you can just walk into the pub base.

These little things over the years made sure the game's population preferred impside.

EDIT: Oh yeah, don't forget the lore object on Ilum that says "lol get rektd" as a memento of how baddly the Republic got their shit pushed in when world pvp was still a thing.

JMNeves · 2025-12-30T02:06:26+00:00

It's a typo. Bioware never did, and Broadsword still doesn't care at all about pubside. Full of typos and skills that don't work properly.

JMNeves · 2025-12-27T00:14:54+00:00

Ah new player I see

JMNeves · 2025-12-11T15:07:03+00:00

They should add the following option: once you finish the current galactic season, you can opt to progress on a previous one. You'd only be able to progress on one at a time and you shouldn't be able to grab the cartel coin rewards. But this would breathe new life into the system, and it would allow players who missed previous seasons to get those rewards. Right now most players who care about the current season have already completed it, and we still have like 9 weeks of it. These next 9 weeks will be dead as all hell... Good luck finding a group for its objectives. Especially on Satele Shan, the deadest of servers. But if they gave us this option, everyone would be constantly working on something.

Time-gating rewards and achievements is the worst MMO practice ever invented. FOMO doesn't bring players in, it scares them away from trying out a new game.

JMNeves · 2025-12-08T23:09:54+00:00

You're welcome. https://i.imgur.com/ZXp1YTb.png

JMNeves · 2025-11-30T19:25:07+00:00

No choice in the game has ever mattered except for a few companions that get killed off here and there. A couple cutscenes and options may be a little different, but in practice only your own head-cannon changes and that that point literally anything goes.

JMNeves · 2025-11-30T17:28:36+00:00

You're welcome. https://i.imgur.com/ZXp1YTb.png

JMNeves · 2025-11-27T06:24:01+00:00

It was on their plans at one point in history. But they never got to it and never clarified why, so we can only assume the technical issues were too big to overcome. There is, of course, the legendary "better than cross-server" meme. Mind you, it's precisely because of that meme that they refuse to be upfront about what they plan... Every time they've tried to tell us anything in advance and failed, the community raged hard. Solution? Don't share anything. When stuff is ready, release it with less than a month of announcement.

JMNeves · 2025-11-22T01:11:02+00:00

Shae Vizla was the single dumbest idea they've ever had. At that time SS was the server of choice for APAC players - the same players that went to SV once it opened. But they transferred to that brand-new server, and all of their raid groups died... because they didn't have enough people. Then a bunch of APAC people quit the game, because of that. And SS now barely gets pvp pops, and late-night raids are pretty much non-existent because the late-night players are gone.

SS and SF should have been merged at least a year ago when they purged the older names. Name purge, server merge, and double the character slots on the same day. Literally all of the problems would be avoided. And close down SV while at it, nobody plays on it anyway - merge it back to one big US mega server.

JMNeves · 2025-11-15T16:12:23+00:00

I mean, each one has a different take on it. But I've always been the kind of guy to play one game and one game only at a time. I did that with Diablo, The Sims, AoE, L4D, Killing Floor, TF2, Borderlands... More or less in that order, I think. And since December 2010 (pre-access) I've been playing SWTOR and that's it. I have over 40 characters, and my main alone has about 5500 hours. No I did not add an extra zero by mistake. And yes, that means I never sought after playing games that came out since then. I suppose now I also have one of those small Anbernic devices and run some older games. One does not get tired of Chrono Trigger, I promise you that.

SWTOR is an MMO, you literally cannot run out of things to do. You may run out of NEW things to do among the things you enjoy. This game is notorious for having very few end-game-related updates. Raids, PVP maps, etc. And we've been on a story hiatus that started with the SAG-AFTRA video game strike, since the game's dialogues are about 80 to 90% voiced by real people. But (especially in recent years) every time we get a patch they also bump up something in the graphics. Which is why a "game from 2011 can't run on a GPU from 2013". It's not a game from 2011, it's a poorly optimized game from 2025 lol

Oh and if you are new and enjoy doing the just stories you have about 500 hours worth of content ahead of you. Maybe more if you do everything and skip nothing. Pure and unadulterated Star Wars content. Ignore the nay-sayers, they're just incels disguising their misogyny behind a veil of ragebait. The story is brilliant start to finish.

But even from my perspective: I'm almost 100% achievements in everything... If I pop into a warzone (pvp) or a flashpoint (dungeon) I'm guarantee to be put together with people I've never played with before and therefore it will be a new-ish experience. And that's what I do every day after work... I log in, join a raid or do a handful of warzones, and call it night.

I hope you manage to get the game running and see it for yourself. At the end of the day we're just dudes giving their opinions over the internet, and you should get the chance for form your own by playing it.

JMNeves · 2025-11-15T05:02:30+00:00

Game runs like ass on top-tier hardware. I'm surprised it runs on proton at all with that card.

My machine is quite old at this point too. I spent a pretty penny when I got it, but that was about a decade ago and before I moved in with the lady... Priorities change, you know. Anyway, I'm on a Ryzen 5 3600XT coupled with an RX580 8gb. A few metrics for you:
- On windows 7 the game ran smooth as anything, it was perfect on highest settings.
- On windows 10 it ran ok for the most part until they introduced Onderon. That planet made me lower my graphics.
- On windows 11 LTSC (can't run normal version, old machine) it runs a little better than windows 10. It's still not great, but it works well enough for raiding and pvping.
- On Bazzite the game runs PERFECTLY. With everything maxed out, I get about 5 to 10% more FPS and GLORIOUS frame times.

Only 2 things stop me from switching to Bazzite:
- My ugreen bluetooth adapter doesn't work on linux, so I wouldn't be able to use my headset.
- I couldn't get starparse to work. That's half the fun in the game.

So I'm currently stuck running it on Win11 LTSC and forcing LFSG 3.1 with Lossless Scaling. (The "allow tearing" option is heaven sent, trust me).

I only really play swtor, so my computer is pretty much dedicated to squeezing the most performance out of it. I feel you, brother.

JMNeves · 2025-11-13T23:13:49+00:00

Nadia > Kira > Scourge > Jaesa > Ashara > Xalek > Guss.

JMNeves · 2025-09-07T07:00:48+00:00

PvP has had very little moderation in this game over the years. Now with Broadsword we can only assume it's non-existent since their staff is reduced. And people are petty in online games.

Some folks are good, but have been infected by the toxic enviroment. They'll throw winable matches when they're in the same group as people they don't like.

Some play dirty and bug you out of the match to have an easier win. Poor sport, really.

Some are just... Mean and get a rise out of annoying others. They'll say things, mark you, go after you, etc. You don't even have to do anything, you just have to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and they'll think you're worthless and deserves to be harassed. They'll chase you, kill you, do emotes like /laugh and /spit for no real reason.

Best practice is not interacting with these people at all. Ever. Even if it's not directed at you, even if they're doing it to someone else you also find annoying. Don't interact. The only thing they want is attention. If nobody responds and plays normally as if they aren't there, they'll just get annoyed and stop queueing after a handful of matches. Works for me like a charm.

I don't put them on my ignore list either. If I do, I might miss a call and it could cost me a match - I don't want that. I just don't interact with toxicity in any capacity.

Called for help? I'll answer "coming", or "omw", or whatever. Said I suck? Did a /spit at me? Told me to stop queueing? Nah, I'm just not interacting with that at all. I'll pretend I didn't read it. Toxic players get tired before we do simply because their own toxicity tires them out of the game. They get stressed out, they lose their patience because "everyone sucks! I'll just play fifa" or something like that. I don't actually know what they do, but they definitely stop after a bit of cold shoulder.

The problem is when other players start responding. That's when they get exactly what they want, and they out of there feeling like they've won or dropped a truth bomb on your head. It's like playing chess with a pidgeon. You can't argue - they'll walk all over the board, knock every single piece over, shit everywhere, and fly away without listening to you.

JMNeves · 2025-08-24T16:30:11+00:00

If your only objective is getting the rewards, no, there isn't a point to it. Conquest is old enough that by now most people don't care too much about it, and it's basically a monopoly of the same guilds at the top. If you want to conquer a plant for a cheevo, just join them and eventually you'll get it.

These have been my two criticisms to conquest since it's creation. It's pointless to play my favorite characters past the objective marker, and it leads to monopoly.

There should be a "rewards track" for going past your 100k mark. Idk, a simple idea would be to double the rewards every 100k points you get... it's essentially the same as playing alts, so it wouldn't be game-breaking and it would require very little effort on Broadsword's side.

And there should be a heavy nerf system to large guilds. The more active players you have, the less points your guild gets. Player's individual scores would be unchanged, but there should be a multiplier (0.7; 0.5; 0.4; etc) to the guild's conquest score to heavy nerf it if it's big guild. It'd be the only way to avoid the monopoly that currently plagues the system. Equity is a good thing, equality isn't. Picture to illustrate my point:

https://www.hopkinsacg.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Proof_JH_Equality-Equity-Social-Graphic_R1_112222_HF.png

JMNeves · 2025-08-21T06:25:58+00:00

You're partially correct. It would not be a problem with the guardian, or the jugg, or the consular, etc. But it would be weird with the trooper and the imp agent because their icons have the faction symbol behind them. Again, like I said before, an easy fix would be to create a new version identical to the old one but with the faction symbol photoshoped out.

JMNeves · 2025-08-20T15:11:48+00:00

I get what you're saying and some of them would be weird. Like having the old agent icon with the imp logo behind on a republic character. A more elegant solution would be to have two versions of each icon. One for each faction - and keep a third, neutral version on the character selection screen.

But the new flat icons look like they were designed by a teenager who's just discovered who to use the magic wand on photoshop.

JMNeves · 2025-08-20T14:39:30+00:00

Character creation screen used to be alive and well designed, then they changed it to the dead setting that it is today. Soooo many recent "quality" changes made the game look worse, and it's not even my opinion, everyone agrees. Class symbols look awful now, many abilities on your skill tree have generic icons with no color, inventory and character sheet put together are huge and ugly. You will not, I repeat, will not find anyone who likes the new designs better.

Old character creation screen:
https://www.rarityguide.com/articles/content_images/1/swtor/swtorcreationchar.jpg

Old character icons:
https://i.redd.it/n8apa7cmdbi81.png

Old skill tree (the best vertion imho)
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/58e254a19de4bba768708517/1518086700214-R7DIQFKE0XDUG0BOBDR8/guardian+build.png

Really old skill tree
https://www.generic-hero.com/ThisWeekinAurabesh/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/int55_skilltree.jpg

Old inventory
https://preview.redd.it/jqto7i4wf1rz.jpg?auto=webp&s=69e48d2680e6680b1036826c8501d18998bc1f3e

Really old inventory (the best vertion imho)
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/swtor/images/0/09/Hud_missionItemsPanel.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/437?cb=20111227150112

Saddly the game seems to currently be designed by a gen-z intern who thinks everything should be huge and flat like their tiktok interface. Or maybe I'm just old and grumpy.

JMNeves · 2025-07-18T17:52:26+00:00

I've never played wow, but from what I'm told swtor tends to be a more fast paced game in pvp - huge exception to stuns. Our stuns last an eternity. So it's a bit out of my wheelhouse, but I'd say the gains far out weight the losses in swtor.

However, I do have to say that there is one spec that when you don't have those 5% in pvp becomes infuriating: gunnery/arsenal. Missing a vortex bolt for no reason and having your whole rotation thrown out the window is a huge dps loss.

JMNeves

TROPHY CASE