May the Force be with youFollow

I rolled my first Republic alt over the weekend. Seeing as I have a 50 assassin, I'm not sure why I decided to roll a Consular, but I did. I chose a female Miraluka (mask option 1, they remind me of Morpheus' sunglasses from The Matrix) and got into the story. I decided to go sage with this character and think I have decided on a Telekenetics spec. I'm actually having some fun healing so far and I love blowing people up in WZs. I manage to get to level 21 so far and am about 1/4 of the way through Taris.

Some thoughts so far on Empire vs Republic and other things. I am really enjoying the Consular story. I thought the Inquisitor story was great as well, but I've never really enjoyed playing the power hungry megalomaniac, so I think the Consular story fits me better. Having played a tank specced asassin to 50, this sage to 21, and a marauder to 29, I have to say that tank specced characters have a distinct advantage, especially once they get their healing companion. I hardly ever had to stop and regenerate on my assassin. On the sage it feels like any fight against a gold star mob and I'm forced to Meditate afterwards, moreso for Force regen than health regen.

The only starting planets I've done so far are Tython, Korriban, and half of Hutta, but man Tython blows the other two away. Maybe it's just the redness of Korriban getting to me after taking two characters through it, but I'm already ready to roll a Jedi Knight alt just to get to see Tython again. I am also looking forward to seeing if Ord Mantell is as much better than Hutta.

Finally, the Republic gets MUCH better looking gear. I was very thankful to see that a lot of the Jedi gear actually makes them look like Jedi. I realize the Sith aren't Jedi, but there really wasn't that much difference in their appearance in the movies. I guess they had to do something to differentiate them, especially for PVP, but the Empire gear just looks horrible. With the exception of the Consular's War Hero gear, I like every set I've seen. My consular is currently wearing the Robe on Insight (from Athiss) and the rest of her gear is the female formal wear with the colors unified and I have had more than one group member tell me my character looks cool. I can't help but agree.

I don't think the Consular gear is terrible. They end up wearing robes a lot like what Obi-wan wore in the movies. I think they just had to do some embellishing because people would have sh*t a brick if your gear choices were a plain robe with the only choice being whether it was light brown, dark brown, or gray.

The Sith gear is just absolutely terrible. Every set has some weird things sticking off of it in completely random places. I don't remember Darth Maul dressing that differently from a Jedi other than his robes were darker colors.

I think they should have gone with the hooded robe look for light armor. Then they could have used the robed with the "hooded duster" as medium armor.. And that would have left the Darth Vader look for heavy armor. The sets could have been different colors and with different embellishments for Empire and Republic. The Empire sets could have been blacks and grays and reds and the Republic sets could have been browns and greens and blues.

Also, any Jedi robe has to have a hood and there should totally be an interface option to have the hood be up or down.

Again, some of those you linked are just the traditional robes with...embellishments.

I still stand by this:

Light armor = single robe
Medium armor = layered robe
Heavy armor = Darth Vader look or that one you said you were shooting for for the Republic side

I'm glad they didn't just go with a plain robe for all of the Jedis and just change the armor value because then everybody would look alike and it would be damn tough to tell the classes apart just by looking at them.

The devs have spoken a lot about gear design, and have said they'll be trying to stay closer to the simple aesthetics, in response to public feedback.

That said, I hated the Consular gear on my male character, though I've never minded it that much on Kira. It's definitely better on the slimmer frames of female characters. The last craftable robe is pretty great though. As a general rule, I'm finding I don't like the mid-level Jedi gear. Early level Esseles/Coruscant simple hooded robe is usually what I wear for a long while. I kinda hate what my Guardian is wearing now, in his 40s, but that robe just looks weird with armored greaves. I do like the simple robe over body armor look, though.

Word of warning Big, helms are glitched right now on Miraluka and anything that isn't full-face won't show at all.

As for story, I liked the Consular arc a lot. I can see why it's criticized, though, after seeing how much work went into the Knight story. I actually still like the Consular story more, though. I'm not going to say more, lest I spoil things.

Any head that doesn't prompt the game to remove the mask (which basically limits it to full-head coverings, like masks) currently does not show, and this has been the case since 1.2. They had previously had a glitch where hair/masks clipped through hoods (and head pieces showed even when hoods were up, causing a lot of clipping), so this might be a bug relating to a fix.

It's also possible it is working as intended, but I hope not. I like Miraluka, but I want options. What they really need to add is a way to change your mask after charater creation, so you can switch to one that doesn't clip your current helm.

1.3 makes all social gear into adaptable gear, so it'll scale to your armor proficiency. That might not help you feel like a Jedi, but it does give you far more options. As for guardian gear, I really don't mind the basic kind of armored robe--it makes sense to me that, in a period rife with the various defensive needs from both lightsaber and blaster attacks, that they'd need to add more passive defenses. Hard enough to train a knight to be effective against just one of those attack types, let alone both. Then you consider environmental and kinetic damage that a battlefield could cause?

The ridiculously flamboyant stuff I don't like, but I have no problems with them making gear look more like armor than basic robes.

Yeah, but you're talking about the PVP gear. PVP gear is always ridiculous. The only thing the normal gear has are the shoulder pads.

I'll probably just be using the Jedi Battlelord set.

Really, though, most gear is fine.

At the end of the day, I like the simplistic gear for just about every class.

What I find absurd is that the Inq gear gets ridiculously flamboyant, but Spoilerthe emperor is just wearing a simple mask and robes. You think he'd be the one with all the feathers and junk. Then again, I suppose he doesn't really need anything to make him more intimidating--being faceless to the enemy is already terrifying.

Anyway, the level 20 and 40 pvp sets for Inq are fine. 40 are actually pleasant. Part of me actually likes the 50 pvp set, at least for a Sorcerer (I rationalize it as being an aesthetic form of Dun Moch). The Columni set is just ugly.

I met the spoiler during the Jedi Knight storyline, but not during the Consular one.

Yeah, that was the only reason I spoiler'd it. I didn't know you actually Spoilercould kill him--I figured the story arc would end just with you Spoilerstopping the immortality ritual. I'm still hoping I can Spoilerturn him to the light side...