Five *********** years, BioWare, and this is still happening as of tonight, 09/26/2020. This is completely unacceptable, this is my first time ever doing this stupid *********** pile of trash quest line and I can't even get past the 3rd/final one because he can't be made vulnerable and the console doesn't activate, I just sat there working him for TWENTY MINUTES without dying getting nowhere. This is the kind of $h1t that makes people rage-quit and drown puppies in real life. FIX IT.

Please implement this, BioWare! The cursor is lost ridiculously easily when a bunch of stuff is flashing on your screen. It's surprisingly annoying. I'm on a 4K IPS 120Hz G-Sync gaming monitor, no way am I going back. It can't be that hard to make the cursor a scalable HUD element, can it?

Turns out you can still get Vette back as a companion, though it won't change your choices from the story. Details here for anyone else who may ever see this thread and want to know. (Using the Companion Locator Terminal in the left side of your personal phase on Odessen.) http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=9847735&postcount=5

THANK you! I didn't know this thing even existed. It doesn't show up on the world map or mini map despite having all layers toggled on, and it doesn't even highlight when you mouse over it. I don't recall ever seeing any mention of this Companion Locator Terminal inside the game before. I had already paid a ton in gifts to get Vette to level 50 after completing KOTET. I did it BECAUSE I knew I was done. I don't have a screenshot to prove it, but I specifically checked my Chapters list inside the game on this character right before accepting JUS and every single chapter to the very end was highlighted and "Grant Mission"-able. Wiping out Vette must have been a bug for me, that's all I can think of. She was literally standing next to me, level 50, with KOTET completed, then disappeared and her bio listed her as dead. I realize based on the description of using this terminal that my actual story considers her dead and will forever more for this character, but oh well. I guess at this point since I'm already in Chapter IX of KOTFE on my "new" Assassin, I'll continue playing him to finish it out; but this makes me much less concerned for all my alts, of which I have a level 60-70 of every advanced class. I appreciate everyone's responses. Thank you all.

Hi all, I've been away and haven't really played for years. The expansions and such are not clear at all from what I can tell on all the companion changes, which is kind of annoying. Is it possible to get and keep Vette, permanently, as an Assassin? I have two Assassins and just hit 74 on one and apparently after I thought I had finished everything leading up to Ossus, I guess I didn't. I had just finished the quest line where Theron Shan I even took a screenshot before I started the Ossus quest line, linked below. I thought I was done up until that point, since none of the quests in my log were purple and the only quest on the terminal in my ship was for starting Ossus...but apparently not. It killed Vette and chose Torian, which I don't want. IMO, Vette is the best companion in the game. So....I have some questions: 1) I assume this is a permanent choice on this character which cannot be undone; correct? 2) I've transferred the level 70 Assassin I had on a prior server that I haven't played in years solely to level through the content again so I can try to keep Vette, lol. 3) Can someone confirm for me what I need to do, and at what point, to keep Vette as a permanent companion on my "new" Assassin, assuming this is possible? Thanks. Here's a screenshot of what my mission log looked like right before I started Ossus and got Vette auto-killed. I only have Eternal Throne in there because I had been going through it again in Master Mode. Pre-Ossus mission log.

Hi all, I've been away and haven't really played for years. The expansions and such are not clear at all from what I can tell on all the companion changes. Is it possible to get and keep Vette, permanently, as an Assassin? I have two Assassins and just hit 74 and apparently after I thought I had finished everything leading up to Ossus, I guess I didn't. I had just finished the quest line where Theron Shan I even took a screenshot before I started the Ossus quest line, linked below. I thought I was done up until that point, since none of the quests in my log were purple and the only quest on the terminal in my ship was for Ossus...but apparently not. It killed Vette and chose Torian, which I don't want. IMO, Vette is the best companion in the game. So....I have some questions: 1) I assume this is a permanent choice on this character which cannot be undone; correct? 2) I've transferred the level 70 Assassin I had on a prior server that I haven't played in years solely to level through the content again so I can try to keep Vette. 3) Can someone confirm for me what I need to do, and at what point, to keep Vette as a permanent companion on my "new" Assassin, assuming this is possible? Thanks. Here's a screenshot of what my mission log looked like right before I started Ossus and got Vette auto-killed. I only have Eternal Throne in there because I had been going through it again in Master Mode. Pre-Ossus mission log.

I think you mean MK-2; there's no MK-3 gear on the GTN, at least. Also...I beat this guy on the first attempt after switching to tank spec, while remaining in the same DPS gear. It's absurd how big of a difference switching to tank spec is for this fight as an Assassin.

Changing to tank spec made all the difference in the world. I just returned to the game after a couple years off, and only bought 248 stuff off the GTN; I don't have any items above 248 right now. Even in DPS gear as tank spec, it's absurd how squishy Hatred is...bah. I beat him on my first attempt after switching to tank spec in the same gear. Sigh, lol. I think it's dumb to have to do that, but whatever.

I'm pretty sure Master mode Tayvor Slen is harder now than he was a couple of years ago. I doubt the OP is trying in Master, but for anyone who is as of today...it's nearly impossible. YouTubers who recorded videos of it are not taking as much damage as either my Assassin or Mercenary are right now. (Both have item level 246 with 240 augments).

BioWare, please *********** nerf Tayvor Slen on Master. His Full Auto is ABSURD. I'm in full 246 gear, augmented with 240, and I can't beat him on my Assassin or Mercenary. (Same gear level on both.) This is just f'ing ridiculous. I'll write you guys a check for $5,000 USD if 8 of your devs, each playing a different class, can all kill him in Master within five attempts each. (That means nowadays, not having done it in the past.) I'm extremely confident that the above challenge could not be accomplished right now. Also, yes, I've watched the YouTube videos of it being done by Aeyix and Shintar. They are both taking less damage than I am no matter how many cooldowns and heroic moments I use; AND when Shintar is line-of-sighting him, his aggro stays on her. When I try that, aggro switches to Kaliyo and she gets killed. I suspect code changes between a couple of years ago when these videos were recorded and most people were doing Master runs and now have made this more difficult. Please revisit.

Push it back as long as you need to! To h3ll with arbitrary release dates; make it right and make it awesome, then release.

LOL, I can't believe this hasn't been fixed. I played in closed beta all the way through a couple years after release, quit, and just now came back and I still had to do this hack. SWTOR devs.....it's freaking mouse sensitivity. DUKE NUKEM 3D BACK IN THE MS-DOS DAYS HAD A WORKING MOUSE SENSITIVITY ADJUSTER! (Which didn't start off super-sensitive at the lowest setting and go up from there, that is.)

I think it would be awesome if the foils opened while you were holding down space bar for maximum speed, then folded when you let go/run out of engine energy; or perhaps have them open when you're holding down W for max "normal" (non-boosted) speed, and whenever you're not holding down W, they fold. Might we see something like this at some point?

I lagged out on The Bastion, now I can't log back in. Flushed DNS cache in Windows and rebooted, still can't login. I can login in Launcher and hit Play, but it hangs on the loading screen indefinitely. Fix it quickly please, BioWare...

I lagged out in game, end-tasked it, logged back in, hanging at in-game loading screen. Internet connection's fine otherwise. Is The Bastion down for others, too? Was playing just fine ten minutes ago...

Yes, but it doesn't have to be gear. God forbid they make war zones actually enjoyable to all people in terms of content; not forcing automatic losses 95% of the time to people that queue solo whenever they go up against a premade. Well, we don't need "teh 1337 purpz" to be the goal of PvP, either. Gear is a lame way to reward a lot of PvP, and those that truly love it are the ones that have groups to PvP with so they can win all the time. Even the the worst baddies in the world can get the best PvP gear, because it's just a grind. It also makes the playing field uneven. There are all kinds of rewards they could make that don't involve MOAR ENDRRRANCE AND XPURRTEEZ. How about, normalize all of it so it's a fair situation that depends on skill, and not which person has teh better purpz? Make sick-looking armor sets that you have to PvP a ton to get. Forget stats. Make PvP even. The mechanic is already in the game, just force normalization at all levels. MMORPGs need to get away from the whole "gear is all that matters" mindset. I can't stand it, and it wasn't that way before WoW came along.

Devs - are you going to reset the war zone/ranked war zone comms that people have upon expansion, or will people that load up on comms before it hits have a gear-buying advantage as soon as they hit 55? This is a particularly important piece of information we need to have.

Wow, a lot of childish whiners in here, most of which seem to have no clue about how development of an MMORPG works. You can't just assign all devs to work on something. *rolls eyes*

AWESOME! I always enjoyed supplementing leveling with space missions. It's by far the most entertaining mini-game any MMO has ever had. (Though, I suppose it's no longer a mini-game once this goes live.) This is great news for me, personally. Can we expect to see multiplayer space missions at some point? It'd be awesome if I could queue for 4-man hard mode space missions. It would take coordinating with your groupmates to a whole new level.

Now imagine if it was TWICE as enjoyable, doing operations for the fun of it, rather than the gear. Making gear a non-issue helps accomplish this in a big way. The way it's looked at by most modern MMO devs is, "Ok, here we have our rewards, now how do we make them take time to get?" when the question should be, "Ok, we've made this amazing content, now how do we want to reward people for completing it?" It's an entirely different outlook.

Right, I know you can't make it unique every time, but part of longevity is having plenty of options available. More important than that, however, is to have very entertaining content. Some things can be viewed many times, like a great movie. Who wouldn't watch some of the (very minor spoiler alert for BH/IA) There are moments throughout all the class stories that people could watch dozens of times. Come up with entertaining, over the top moments to put in some of the operation cutscenes, and that would definitely help. I agree, and this is the WHOLE problem with MMOs being gear-based. If an MMO's PvE progression is based on gear, absolutely every single operation/raid/etc. becomes trivial over time, because of improved gear. It's inevitable, and without fail, it nullifies the feeling of accomplishment by those that did it when it was really hard because of the lack of gear when the operation was new. Making things gear-based is bad, and most people can't even understand why. Most people think it's a foregone conclusion that you have to kill big bosses for gear, but it's really not; they've just never experienced a good implementation of that not being the case, is all. I agree with the first sentence, but not the rest of this paragraph. At least, not the way you describe it. I'm going to throw something out here - I think Lost Island is far and away the best flashpoint in the game. Can anybody guess why? It's not because of the good loot, (compared to other flashpoints) it's because the boss fights require every single person to not screw up. The boss fights are not about gear. You can go in and clear the place without wiping at all in mediocre gear, if you have skilled players that know the fights. This is exactly the kind of thing I love. Geared players absolutely CANNOT carry morons through it, no matter how geared you are. Good luck getting past the first boss if some noob keeps dropping the AoE target stuff on the DPSers every time, lol; or if both DPSers are too slow/dumb to move out of poison bombs on the final boss. Every person is accountable for themselves, and the you don't have to be geared to do it. I LOVE this aspect of it, and I hope every flashpoint AND operation going forward follows this methodology. It's a formula that was used in Asheron's Call, and it's great. Gear checks are just dumb. SKILL checks, on the other hand, are great. (An even better phrase would be, 'lrn2play checks'.) That's fine, I like operations too for most of those same reasons, but what I don't like about them is that the biggest reason for going is to get gear. I also dislike any boss fight that is based on gear. An easy way to tell is if the encounter is considerably easier if everyone in your group has best-in-slot gear, or close to it, as compared to early on when people had lesser gear. If it is, it's a poor design. If it's not, it's a great design. There's a big difference between a gear-based encounter and a skill-based one. ALL boss fights should be skill checks, IMO; not gear checks. Yeah, an achievement system would be good, but only filled with achievements that matter. The "achievement spam" style in WoW, I don't like. There were some good achievements there, but the vast majority were either ridiculously easy and everyone & their mom had them, or they were long grinds that a retarded monkey could do, given enough time; and that is also dumb. Achievements should be skill-based, and they should give something that won't get its usefulness mitigated over time. A unique piece of gear? Nice, except that tier bonuses make it irrelevant in a long-term sense. I don't like gear rewards. How about awesome stuff, like a Tauntaun mount/speeder? How awesome would it be for a very hard-to-get achievement to award something like that? The Star Wars universe is so unique and varied, there are a billion potentially awesome rewards that aren't based on gear that people would love to try for. Personally, I'd love to have a pet that is a mini-Yoda (not the actual Yoda, but one of whatever his race is) following me around, randomly speaking the way Yoda does, with his own miniature lightsaber that makes an appearance once in a while. Talk about sweet. This is the problem with most MMO players nowadays. They cannot fathom an MMO not based on obtaining gear, since the vast majority of MMOs ever made are based on gear, and the act of obtaining it. Guess what, though? There are ways to make them not be gear-based, and if done properly, it's amazing. You're just proving that making everything be about gear is a bad idea, because take away the gear and you don't want to play the game. There needs to be non-gear incentive. It's like saying there's no reason to live in real life except to get rich. Material rewards should be part of things, not the end-all, be-all. I'm not saying there should be no extra rewards for doing harder versions of things, I'm saying those rewards should not be gear, and that the game itself should trivialize gear; that is, make it a piece of cake for anyone and everyone to get the best gear. This comes back to most people not being able to truly understand how an MMO could work without gear being the focusing point, but trust me when I say it can be done successfully. I don't know why several people here think I said there should be no rewards. I didn't. I said there should be rewards other than gear. Big difference. I agree with everything in this paragraph, except the last one. In my experience, the reward at the end is most of what matters for the vast majority of people. "Disingenuous" is a rather strong word, don't you think? I am not trying to mislead anyone. I would definitely say, however, that content does become garbage if it's based on gear and not content, or the fight of the boss itself. For many years now, most MMOs have used what rewards drop on the boss to determine that boss's difficulty, and that the word "difficulty" has been largely based on hitting harder and having more health points. That's it. That is a very shallow definition of "harder". It has nothing to do with skill or actual difficulty. Moar numberz...yay...*yawn* What was always needed in WoW was more fights like Heigan and the dancing that everyone had to do. Make fights that require people not to fail, and not be based on gear. Fights that you cannot carry people through no matter HOW good your gear is. Damage based on percent of total health instead of raw number is a great way to do this, though no one has ever done it, to my knowledge. (Both damage done, and received.) What? Where did I say this? I agree with you - I *HATE* low-percent drops and anything random as far as drops go. What I said was make some achievements/rewards, (that are not gear) very difficult to get, but NOT because they are rare - but build in a mechanic of some kind that makes it difficult to achieve, but that if you achieve it, you're guaranteed X reward. Oh, I know it's expensive. That's part of why I said perhaps work on this for a future expansion, assuming we ever get one, which I desperately hope we do. You're summing up mostly what I think needs to happen, and I agree. The story needs to be the big thing, not the epic lewtz. I disagree about the "kill X 3 times" thing, though. Forced repetition is just a bad mechanic for anything in an MMO. Devs need to remember that we play this game on our personal time for fun. We do our "grinds" during the week at work.

Hard-to-obtain gear is absolutely NOT what this game needs. They need other kinds of rewards - not gear - that are very difficult to obtain. Things that are optional, not required. That way, the hard stuff people go for is of their own accord and they will enjoy it more accordingly.

Here's a mental test to take to tell the difference between real content, and just garbage. Take away the loot. No reward at the end. Would you ever do it again more than once or twice, ever? (MAYBE 3 times?) No? Then it's not content, it's just filler garbage. Virtually every boss encounter in WoW, ever, fits into that; and most bosses in SWTOR, too. End game PvE needs to be designed as if there are no rewards; THAT is the key to longevity. WoW's a fluke. They came into the MMO scene at the right time with the right product, and it caught on fire in terms of popularity. Every other WoW-esque MMO as far as end game goes has been a tiny drop in the bucket, and virtually all have lost money, because it's not sustainable. WoW gets away with it, no one else will ever be able to again.

Long post incoming, but stick with it - I'm curious what people think. SWTOR has not maintained a significant subscription base. We all know this. The reasons why have been debated ad nauseum. The whole problem with operations in SWTOR (as well as raids in WoW) is the ultimate objective is based on getting gear. They make getting gear the objective, and the content is "meh". Oh, how I long for the days of Asheron's Call, where you repeated quests weekly because they were fun and enjoyable to do, not for the reward... Modern MMOs have completely ignored trying to make large-group content actually fun, by and large. I hate how gear works in SWTOR/WoW/etc. Make everyone have the same stats or similar ones, so that stats don't matter; and let them customize the look/color of their gear. Most people don't want to have to farm PvP, operations, etc. just to be competitive in PvP. It should all be normalized, to a large extent. Make the enjoyment of content the focus of playing the game at the maximum level, not "to getz teh leet purpz". I'm so sick of everything being gear-based. Leveling up to 50 in SWTOR is the most amazing leveling experience in any MMO, ever, and a lot of that is because gear is largely irrelevant; you enjoy the act of leveling and can keep up with decent gear without spending any specific effort to do so whatsoever. Between quest rewards and the commendations you get on each planet, you can just keep buying new mods to put in orange pieces you've acquired, and be geared decently until 50. It's perfect. The leveling in this game is all about enjoyment of content. What this game needs to transition into is having an end game PvE system based on enjoyment of content, not obtaining of items. Most MMOs almost immediately at end game, turn into the equivalent of flipping burgers at McDonald's to get the paycheck. You don't go to enjoy anything, you do it to get something at the end, and that's it. Sure, it starts off enjoyable when you experience a new operation for the first time; but within a few weeks, it generally starts turning into the same old snooze fest as you get the boss fights down and it becomes trivial, and it's just the same old thing. The answer to this is not making bosses hit harder, though I do enjoy a good challenge; it's to provide incentive for people to be there that is not based on simply keeping their character competitive in healing, tanking, or dealing damage. BioWare - you should make obtaining items/gear either irrelevant, or if you want to stick with the current system, then let people obtain the stuff in other ways without having to do operations, flashpoints, or PvP. Gear, specifically the stats on it, needs to be trivialized. You could literally have it be based on time spent doing dailies, or a combination of time spent doing PvP, hard-mode FPs, and questing; or something. Be creative. Operations themselves should be greatly expanded in terms of story inside them. Flashpoints are great in terms of the story as they are right now, but why not make operations have more story than flashpoints, with a lot more choices? Make operations epic in feel and scope in terms of story, with MAJOR different story threads happening. Here's an idea, have random roll chances to get certain uncommon events to happen for people to witness or experience. Find a way to get people to want to experience them for the content, not the loot. Think about how cool it would be if by killing a certain boss with zero deaths in the group on that boss kill, it unlocks a special party room in that operation instance that has a VIP celebration, kind of like an achievement. Some story there with unique cutscenes and dialogue, perhaps award a token each time you get this "achievement" and with enough tokens over time, you can buy something unique. I always loved the slave Leia outfit, (the idea of being able to get it and use it) why not come up with some other equally unique types of items like that? Not the latest & greatest mods to put in gear, but special outfits, or weapons, or heck, even rare story events or cutscenes. Make some content showing Darth Malgus getting scolded as a young child by his family, or a turning point in his life where he was no longer the innocent kid afterward. There are a ton of characters, scenarios, etc. you could use for this. Obviously, things like this would get posted to YouTube ASAP, but it's non-loot incentive to accomplish things. In other words, it's CONTENT that people would want to experience for the sake of content, not those "purpz". You could even make it a long string of events; each time, it unlocks a new 3-5 minute scene of events in the story of a particular character. 10 times, 10 different scenes, a whole story told. Think of the possibilities. I have a suggestion in regards to this. Why not create a huge story arc (this could even be for a game expansion to be released later) where a Jedi (a famous one in-game, or some hermit type off on their own, whatever) finds a way to see into the future and the past in a specific way. A way to witness events at a specific time & place. What this would do is, from a story perspective, give you the ability to develop a ton of content that people would want to see. How awesome would it be to see an in-game recreation of something that happened in the Star Wars movies as a reward for finishing a particular operation, quest, flashpoint, etc.? Create new content that ties into aspects of the Star Wars movies. Put a lengthy (and repeatable) quest line on Tatooine for max-level players where you get to pick one of 3 or 6 or however many "epic moments" in the life of Luke Skywalker from the future via a "force reading". The reason I said a Jedi should invent this is that it would be a great thing for the Sith to steal from the Jedi in the scope of the game. You could have a certain group/faction that controls the knowledge of how to do this on both sides, and even have a huge quest line to join them with their own vendors and rewards, if you wanted. How awesome would it be to go do a repeatable, and lengthy, quest line on Tatooine that lets you choose a cutscene to watch of Luke fighting one of many battles from the huge number of Star Wars books, or original new content for him created by BioWare? How about going to Dromund Kaas and doing a quest line that lets you see Darth Bane landing there as he did in the books, and searching that temple, and watching a recreation of the battle after he comes out of the temple from finding the Sith holocron? This would have massive appeal, and could re-launch the game. Most modern MMO players can't even fathom an MMO where gear isn't the ultimate objective. I've asked plenty of random players on forums about it, both here, in-game, and in other MMOs, and the answer is always the same. "If you don't get best-in-slot gear, why do operations/raids/etc.?" The answer is because that content is almost universally weak. Change the ultimate goal of what people do at end game, (get it AWAY from acquiring gear) and this game could last for a decade+ and make you guys billions. Most people, in my opinion, don't even want to have end game be all about obtaining gear, they just don't know it because they have yet to see a good alternative. I strongly suggest having a person or two at BioWare play Asheron's Call. It's like 15 years old now, but Turbine keeps it going. You can go play a trial for free right now, though there's no way to get to a high level quickly. Talk to old-school Asheron's Call players about what end game was and is like in Asheron's Call. Gear didn't matter in that game; not really. Buffs were ultra-powerful. You were more powerful simply buffing yourself with everything, by far, than an unbuffed person with the best gear in the game, while you were wearing junk. It was a clever way of making gear fun to obtain, but not necessary. It literally makes for an entirely different culture in the game. It's more about enjoyment, and not...grinding for gear.

Some of the best SSDs in the world, performance-wise, still have crap longevity. If you actually research this, you'll find there are Intel SSDs...which last a very long time with low failure rates...and then there is everyone else. Intel stands head-over-heels over everyone else for SSD longevity right now, based on actual failure rate data from large data centers. This picture changes if you start including PCI-Express SSDs, but for SATA, it's Intel or bust if you want it to last a long time.