156 is entry to most weeklies and more than enough to cap. With the Arkanian 162 that you can get for set bonus, using ONLY the armorings and the comms on 2 avatars, let`s say, you can buy at last one 180 offhand, or any repeat gear (like 3 boots) if it has the stats you need and use the mods. SO you STILL don`t lose time, as you are using the comms to min/max on the spot. As for implants, 3 implants won`t make or break you, IF your other gear is kinda sorta sorted, which would be, especially with the pvp relics which you get in 2 hours top. Also, running a fresh toon will give you VERY nice mats for first time runs, so you can get your 180 barrel / hilt for free, as there are plenty of crafters that ask no fees.

The Tommy gun has no place in a SW game. Regardless how "starwarsified" it might look, it`s still an iconic weapon for something else. It IS lore breaking. Now, with the technical things out of the way, I STILL don`t give a darn, as I LOVE that weapon My Agent has the DLA-13 and had the W2000 lookalike weapon (Ten-Kilometer Killer I think is the name) for PvE purposes for a LONG time. She could use the Tommy gun instead for PvE

1. Stop gambling and buy off GTN. That way you`ll never have unused stuff. 2. Buy the missing pieces off GTN or a whole set box. It seems to me like you are just trying to change the system because you failed to use the current one efficiently.

By onerous you mean expensive, I take it.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=740113 <--- there are 2 links further down, with a very creative guy. http://imgur.com/a/Qq08R http://imgur.com/a/I3KIc/all You CAN come up with interesting designs under current game as it is.

They may as well be. Say a guy that fast levels from 15 to 55 gets into your ops, on grounds of "Why the hell not?". It is a wild gun, undisciplined player that can do any of the stupid things noobs - yes, noobs, not newbies - do. Because, at the end of the day, regardless of your gear, if you put only 500 DPS out during a boss, you won`t go very far. Have enough bad players and no amount of gear or skill can make up for them. And if my 3 days`s ago experience with ******e ninjas and ******es in general is to be trusted, GF will become a very shady and "to be avoided" business, unless you queue premade groups. I might be wrong, but it is never a good idea to bring a player that has only seen story and roflstomped everything by being 5 levels higher into ops, where discipline is required. You can cap in 2-3 days with a new Oricon geared toon - that is 5 pieces with full 156. Add some weeklies offtanking for a better geared tank and you CAN cap your ultimates and elites. The 6 months is a very gross exaggeration. I managed for 2 new 55 toons to cap BOTH in a week. Using legacy gear you can move things around, so you will have a mix of 180 and 168 IN A WEEK. Pvp for 2 - 3 hours and you get your relics too. Again, one week. MAX 2 weeks, not 6 months.

Funny enough, there WERE people asking for existing ingame sets made into useable armor. But they kinda forgot a bit in 2 years. Their name is within The Goldfish Legacy.

Bolster down would be really stupid, because new folks might not get decent rotations and their DPS will be **** as a result. By bolstering down, people might not make the enrage times or tight burn phases and we`ll all be **** out of luck, probably just enough for the vets to avoid those like the plague and let the newbies wipe because Bioware didn`t bolster their skill too.

Add the imbeciles with no discipline and an entitlement the size of a continent that will argue with the OP Leader about everything, while they go ahead and pull everything and generally be the imbeciles they are. At least getting gear had SOME measure of work, to give SOME basic skills. Welcome to the world of lvl 15 ops.

Very starwarsy and heroic, I agree, especially the rifle. I`m SO lucky I don`t care one bit about the lore! This is the second time I`m slightly impressed by the new stuff... not a bad start.

SO, in short, you want new stuff because you can`t afford the Covert Energy set? http://tor-fashion.com/covert-energy/

Wonderful speech. Now, will you put your money where your mouth is and pay me 50 million ingame credits if the new Nar Shadaa gambling will have ANY CC option? And yes, I am slightly paranoid with no good reason, but hey, EA is catering an` stuff, so I shouldn`t be worried and your money should be safe, right?

You are assuming this will be CC free. If it isn`t, I`m sure you`ll just have one more thing to be upset about.

I proposed somewhere else something to this effect, but going a bit further - UI tab, with personal customizable buffs / debuffs. It`s main goal is to help keep track of procs and actual debuffs on the boss. Why UI tab? Because I can move it in a position that is suitable for me, instead of moving whole name bars and make a mess of my existing UI.

Mass Effect 3 is a single player game. No new raids for a while, so a single player oriented expansion while there are no new ops for about a year is really pushing it.

Who are you trying to convince? Him, you, or Bioware? Yes, and one of them is not to do anything about it, or add anything out of the ordinary, if any at all. You might not like it, but that doesn`t make it any less of a prime candidate for the best idea - "if it ain`t broke, why fix it?".

http://i.imgur.com/kET1L.jpg . You see, you have to feel heroic and stuff. I also miss the old crit classes, or the "glass cannons", which would kill a tank in 3 crits, or 1.5 seconds. The good old days where everybody was either an archer, or a knife user and dex would make you impossible to be hit AND add insane crit chances and modifiers. But getting 2-shotted isn`t neither heroic, nor very casual like. At least we are both nostalgic now.

What citation? Sooner or later you end up at 55. And once you leveled one 55 on each side, suddenly you are left with only 3-4 quests per planet, part of that class`s story. Everything else is old news. You might take longer, but you are getting to the same conclusion - lvl 55 and "Galactic Story Arc", which holds little value. I`m not. I am also not the OP. But I do like the idea on its own merit. Some people don`t laugh twice at the same joke. If I am to level a Sage, for instance AND a Shadow, I will have to run the same content, to the letter. It can be argued that it resembles the same joke said twice. It`s even more humor-less if I do them one after another.

We have a lot of things we want and won`t get. I was on Red Eclipse since day 1 - that didn`t mean I didn`t lose names in TWO merges. Funny enough, I managed to name them as I originally wanted, because I didn`t know about special chars available ingame in 2012. The fact still stands - I didn`t like it one bit that I lost names when I had the foresight to see THE best PvE server for EU and sat on it, even against hours of queues at start. I`ll survive it. Maybe OP would need to compromise a little. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=738953&page=5 <--- this is his second topic, just because he`s special. He has very nice options in it and also has proven that he has no idea what he`s talking about, as everything he asks can be done currently, with points 2 and 3 identical to how he wants them. Do you know what could benefit from the manpower NOT diverted to catering to shattered feelings over a name? The damn switching instance bug that ruins enemy nameplates and it`s basically a free relog each time you want to do group content, or banks on previous knowledge that, regardless of the instance, when you enter the heroic instance it will automatically put all in the same one. Not working with open Heroics, though, like some on Hoth, for instance. It`s in the game since only 2012...

Here is the crux of my argument - that is not the choice I made. I made the choice of not doing the class quest, not avoid getting companions. In my opinion, it is a mistake that companions are tied to the planetary questing. We have a forced choice upon us - if we avoid story, we can`t get companions. It would be nice and the idea is a decent concept in my view to have one other option for companions - either a "farmy" / "grindy" alternate mission, or legacy placeholder droids, or something to that effect. The previously proposed idea offers a choice for the ones that don`t like / want companions tied to the story. _________________________ This probably is tied with the "story" vs "gameplay" argument and we have found a situation in which story can bite you in the ***. You are forced to go through the story, even if you don`t want it. Not arguing against the very good points made, just trying to underline my position over this: I am forced a choice, even if I don`t want to make it - as in I am avoiding the story part of the game, but companions are tied to it.

He did the content. Let`s assume he farmed one mob for one year, just for the hell of it - brings a very interesting image to mind. He DID the 1 to 5 mil XP. If he has done it in a different way it shouldn`t be punished for going outside the beaten path. To you, doing the story is not to level, is for any other reason. To somebody else it`s a chore. You two are on different plans - you are there to smell the dafodils, the other guy is there to do NiM ops. You don`t care about the speed at which planetary questing gets you to 55, he has found a way to half the time. Neither of you is wrong. The problem is that it is wrong. We are ALL working to the same goal - end game content. One player might be inefficient and spend 30 days to get to 55. Another can spend 30 hours, by using the best xp per hour content possible at all times - might be a combination of activities, might be farming / grinding one mob / one flashpoint / a singular activity repeated ad nauseam. The correct analogy is this: You are pushing a cart for 8 hours a day. The other guy is pulling a cart 8 hours a day. Nothing is changed except the way in which you are doing the activity, it`s not a different one. At this point neither is willing to accept that other players have a right to play the game as they see fit, so I will stop participating in this conversation, as it is highly unlikely we`ll reach common ground. I don`t particularly care about this idea, but it is an interesting concept to limit extra time spent for players that go outside the norm. Could be considered a fair compromise (the droids idea) for players that are farm / grind oriented and which might not enjoy running from hub to hub for the 6th+ time. Let`s agree to disagree.

My line of thought is pretty much this: companions are not gear, nor rewards. They are just part of the game. They are tied to the actual story, which can be seen as optional, or would be seen as optional if Bioware wouldn`t force us to do it. I`ll explain in a different way: Bioware, or the game, assumes I will do the hubs in order and get the companions by default, as part of their questing rails. Any player that does it`s leveling "by the book", gets the companions. Now, we have the OP - which is a player that has one goal only - lvl 55 ASAP. It is the same goal as the above player, only this is more efficient - it plays content that gives him better xp / hour, either by the actual content, or cutting dead times like running between hubs. The "normal" player and the OP earn the same XP in the end, as lvl 1 to 55 is the same every time, so the effort is the same - they have to go over a distance, at their personal pace. Why should the second player, or the one that doesn`t level by question miss on core mechanics, like crew gathering and crafting? Your PVP/GSF example is slightly off, as we seem not to be able to reach common ground. Not meant as an insult, nor an issue. If you would be forced or the game would tie core mechanics, like crafting or mats gathering to PvP / GSF, then the game should provide an alternative, yes. Because that is my point of view = equity. If a player earns 5 mil XP (out of butt number, for comparison purpose), that`s 5 mil XP regardless. There should be ONLY 5 mil XP in all the options of leveling / getting XP, with anything else being separate. In this case, the companions should be / should have been separate from the story and / or Bioware should have offered options for the players that don`t want to level via planet questing, as strange as it might sound. That is the crux of my argument. And since they didn`t think of it, just like many other things, it doesn`t seem such a preposterous idea to ask for companions or replicas, or no bonus droid placeholders. It would require revamping of companions and redoing stories at the very least if they go the separate route, which won`t happen... ever. Under the earlier proposed idea it will require, at the very least, implementation of 5 droids with full companion functionality, which seems improbable. In the meantime, we still bug when we switch instances and that is only unpatched / fixed since game launch, so it has a 0.000000000000001% chance of seeing the light of day. We have better odds of being struck by a lightning

It`s a game first and foremost. Players have the right to play as they see fit and not be punished if they keep within the confines of the game - in this case, get to max level. It is down to the individual to decide how to play a given game. You like story and that is ok. Somebody else might not like it and that`s ok too. None of them is right or wrong - they are both right. Ironically enough, once you get to 55 it is as questless as you can get it.

Saw today a name "Super'Ninja" or some such. While it is not the perfect identical copy of what was asked, you CAN substitute space and underscore with ' . SO, all you have to do is buy one rename and go for "Bob'Terin" or "Suzy'Gigaslash", or start a new toon if you`re cheap. Luke'Skywalker might not fit but give it a try. I think we`re done here.

The correct analogy would be him going to work and having exactly the same volume of work as his coworkers. The actual work requires the exact same effort, only it is different than of his coworker`s. Only he has to climb one extra set of stairs to get to the cafeteria I am not arguing against your other points, just this one, for better accuracy.