Agent Warrior Knight (not done yet) Inquisitor Bounty Hunter I definitely like the knight story line better than the last two even though I am not done yet. But I can't say it is better than the Warrior story. I really liked the warrior story, especially the ending of it. I may change my mind about these two (knight and warrior) but for sure the agent story tops them all. Plus you get a fantastic ship! On a side note, the bounty hunter story is a real yawner. I didn't feel like a bounty hunter, and I certainly didn't like most of the response choices to conversations. I found myself just saying "Meh, whatever. I guess I will choose 'pay me good' each time."

I actually had this happen: Riding along on my speeder through Belsavis, exiting some prison area (can't remember which one), one of those cat things jumps out from behind a tree and attacks! It knocks me off my speeder and leaves me flat on my back with Gault standing there watching. The cat-thing proceeds to literally bite off my head (the animation was perfect too, the bite came right down over my head onto my neck). Without missing a beat, Gault says: "Mmmm that's gonna leave a mark!" And Sprite went everywhere.

Everything in computing has limits, including massive PVP battles. Just because 200 people on screen at one time is possible in this game, doesn't mean that all machines (or any machines) have to handle that kind of load. The game and engine designers cannot create a game where every load no matter how tough is handled flawlessly. So long as 200+ Ilum players need to compete against each other at the same time, there are going to be FPS drops, there just isn't a way around that. Rest assured that if you are getting 20 FPS in the Ilum scenario, there are probably 199 other folks getting 20 FPS or less too. I think that many people try to compare FPS/console games with MMOs and are disappointed when the game slows down under heavy loads. MMOs are never going to always function perfectly unless the designers limit the number of people on any one shard. The real solution is to do a sort of Instanced Ilum, or maybe something like Wintergrasp in WoW. Does anyone remember what it was like before Wintergrasp had a maximum player limit? Good Lord that was stupid.

Yep, 51 pages in and people are still making the same mistakes and the same bad arguments they did on the first 10 pages. I feel like this board is not really about communication so much as it is about venting and hating. In the end its the first post that gets airtime, the rest are lost in the static. People are forced to start a thread to be heard.

Sure they can. They can make sure that any skill activated which is currently unavailable costs the player time. As it is today, the players can spam all their skills and the first available one will activate. BW can definitely curb 3rd party macro use if they wanted. But amazingly, they don't. Personally I think that speaks volumes about their intention. It means that the previous part of your post is right on the money. They can score PR points by officially being against them and then through game design allow them anyway. Personally, I think that BW should go an entirely different direction. They should make a macro system that is so easy that anyone can create one. BW should create a macro customization user interface which is very graphical and intuitive. Then macros are just part of how the user interface works, rather than being what amounts to some, a mysterious incantation of strange text and symbols.

I think a deeper question is: Why does BW feel that the game needs any romantic relationships with companions? I see several problems with the idea of romantic story arcs: The romantic story ends with max affection of the companion There is no game mechanic that benefits from romance The companion is just an computer generated character and it raises some real questions about us that we feel a need to have a "relationship" with it. The RP aspects are limited since the companion acts no different if it is married to you or hates your guts. The fact that it is opposite-gender-only creates a bunch of activism in response If you allowed same-gender "relationships" you would also create a backlash against the game from families who don't want their children acting out same-gender relationships online. The real solution is to remove romantic relationships entirely. It was a bad idea to start.

Well I would be for it too I suppose, but I would really like to see this skill activation issue fixed too. Right now I stopped playing my warrior because I realized that I'd have to cheat to be able to activate many of my skills optimally. Instead I play classes like Sorc or Merc whose skill bloat isn't nearly as bad as warrior. By the way if you hear people complaining about the "red text" error message spam. These are people using 3rd party macros. And if they say they are not, they are just liars too. I find it hilarious to hear them complain and then claim that they just mash the same skill over and over waiting for the cooldown. Yeah... right.

You are talking macros and I am talking skill activation. Imagine you have 6 skills mapped to 123456 Try spamming the string 123456 in WoW. If a skill could not be cast, it does not let any other skill in that sequence get cast either. This is not true in SWTOR, it will cast any of the 6 skills, whichever is available first.

I have used plenty of castsequence macros in WoW to good effect. No they aren't a panacea but they do help in many situations where all you want to do is generate threat or rotate through your trinkets, or create macros to swap stances and use a skill, etc. And you are completely wrong about item 3 in your list. There are plenty of conditionals which are based on your "stance" or "shapeshift". Here is the issue, and I know this already from trial. SWTOR can be a completely prioritized system for some classes. The way skill activation works a person can hit 5 skills in sequence as fast as possible and the first one which was not on CD, had enough resources and whose caster/opponent state was met will be activated. This means that a person can send to the game something like the string: 123456 and if the skill activated by the 1 key was not available because the opponent was not stunned, and skill activated by the 2 key was not available because you didn't have enough rage, but the skill mapped by the 3 key was available then it would be activated and the rest of the skills for 4, 5 and 6 would be ignored. This makes it possible to spam 123456 in this game and activate the best possible skill available at any given moment. Sure a player cannot spam this macro all the time. But there are many cases where a good sequence would totally optimize skill activation for the player. The reason for this is because the game does not trigger the GCD when a skill was attempted but was not available. This is unlike WoW where that would happen. WoW did this for the very reason that it trivializes skill selection. Unfortunately SWTOR developers learned NOTHING from WoW about this. Back to my point. Certain classes like Sith Warrior would definitely have a big advantage if they use macros of this sort. In fact many probably already are. Finally and more importantly, you assumed that I was "fearing" something. I am not. My concern is only that BW fix their skill activation flaws and when they do, implement a FAIR macro system that does not benefit classes with specific resource mechanics. If you haven't played a BH I suggest you try it so that you understand why it is not just priority that determines what skill to hit next.

I pointed this out earlier but in a 36 page thread stuff gets lost. Some classes will benefit more from macros than others. Sith Warrior for example has many skills that achieve basically the same ends (damage/threat) but have different rage cost/generation and target state mechanics. This means that a Warrior could prioritize these skills according to target state and rage. In doing so, he would be able greatly reduce the number of buttons on his bar. BH Mercenary on the other hand, has a heat mechanic which builds up (negatively) and every single skill has to be evaluated for whether it puts him into a bad heat state. He cannot simply mash buttons and expect that there is some prioritization which would be more beneficial than careful, manual heat management. While it's true that even the BH Merc could benefit from a couple of macros to make his life easier (for example putting Rocket Punch and Shoulder Slam on the same button and executing Rocket Punch only if Shoulder Slam isn't available) his benefit would be nothing like the Sith Warrior's. Does this mean that Sith Warrior is harder to play and needs the benefit of macros? Maybe or maybe not. Right now a BH Merc has to do careful heat management, but his skills are pretty simple to prioritize for the most part. However, the Warrior's Rage management is probably not so nuanced once you get a good rotation going. His problem is that he has too many skills to choose from at any moment and taking advantage of every tactical opportunity is hard. So: Merc = Easy Skill Priority + Hard Resource Management Warrior = Hard Skill Priority + Easy Resource Management If you add macros in and warrior gets a boost in optimizing skill priority, suddenly he has a great advantage over Mercs in this analysis. I think Bioware is being careful and making sure they don't blow class balance when they add in macros. In the meantime however, people are using all kinds of hardware AND SOFTWARE to implement macros. So the top-level gamers (the ones who really know computing and gaming well) will be at an advantage. But really this is always the case. Even if they added in macros, these folks would still find an edge. SUMMARY for the TLDRs Out There In the end all adding macros would do is remove the spammy RED TEXT error messages when these guys using 3rd party hardware/software automate button mashing. And it might also slightly imbalance classes because of the tradeoffs in skill priority and resource management.

So why couldn't he have been neutral?

Anakin wasn't neutral?? I don't think General Grievous was attuned to the force. The saber was bound to him before he had hit Dark I. :-O lol you know I am right!

Why people want to make their lightsaber look like a training saber, I will never know.

I will say it again since this topic is so incredibly derailed. (Unfortunately the guy above me just said the same thing. lol) There are FREE SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS that a person can download to make a standard keyboard do even more sophisticated things than many of the hardware products. I won't mention the names because I don't condone their use and they are probably a violation of the Terms and Conditions of using this game. And yes that includes any product branded with SWTOR logos. If BW doesn't want you using automated systems for combat and this is stated in their terms, then doing so is a violation of those terms no matter the method. So the point is, there is no advantage that a special mouse, or keypad has over what your computer itself can do. This whole argument is pointless. All adding macros into the game would do is make doing the same thing simpler and more controlled. In fact it would probably expose some real weaknesses that need to be corrected in the execution of skills.

Actually it is totally false. There are free to download software alternatives that allow you to remap keys on your keyboard. You don't need hardware and you don't need money to perform the kind of "macros" you all are talking about. Real macros would actually take into account the in-game state of the character, conditional execution, etc. What everyone is talking about here is really little more than buttons that send multiple button clicks. And the truth is that even if there were macros, the playing field would not be leveled because the same barrier that prevents players from setting up sophisticated keybinds would also make them incapable of writing macros.