While not a direct answer to the problem I can see Bioware's response would be that you can filter the flashpoints before queuing. The reason I expect it hasn't been dealt with properly before is it does open up a whole can of worms in changing any aspect of it. For example the actual problem (as opposed to it just taking longer due to lack of dps) of having sub 75 players in certain flashpoints is down to mechanics, what's the point in having a 30 second res timer if you can queue a healer that doesn't even combat res yet, or a tank without taunt or threat control? The original flashpoints were crafted to ensure that players would have the tools they needed to complete them at the level they became available. When the ability reworks happened all of sudden you had leveling players without the skills they needed for the flashpoints which was compounded by opening up a lot of the flashpoints into tacticals instead. So do we change the access level, re-order ability acquisition across all classes or change mechanics in the flashpoints? Focusing on something like the bonus rewards for selecting all FPs, If someone like me has completed most vet flashpoints to the point of all achievements completed (many times over if it tracked actual runs) or is so bored of it constantly being Hammer, Athis or Directive 7 popping why should there be less of a reward for targeting our playtime to things we actually want to do. But at the same time how would that solve farmers always queuing for the same FPs? That doesn't even then touch on HM bonus bosses being a complete waste of time vs. reward. As I said it's a can of worms that anyway you look at it would take more dev time to fix then they can probably spare. It would be nice if they could look at it one day though.

Anyone else still showing duplicate companions in their window even after 5.10.1a patch? I've got two Lt Iresso's, one from his recruitment mission and one from the reclaim terminal. Qzyen & C2-N2 shows up as recruited in the Other followers section and also in the unavailable box but aren't showing on the companion reclaim terminal as being able to be restored, they've also lost influence level being at 10 previously and now down to 9.

Caught with her hand in the cookie jar and the audacity to look you in the face and say "would you like one of your own cookies that i'm helping myself to?"

A choice negated in its entirety on Iokath.

I'd put my money on a similar system to choosing the divine in Dragon Age Inquisition, decisions you make add to a scoreboard for the candidates up until the reveal and then boom 'personal' traitor #choicesmatter

I think I'd have to agree in general with the knight or warrior being closest to the classes the story seems written for. The JC seems like a natural choice in that alliance building, leading and coordinating things on a planetary scale is part of their remit but there are just too many parts of the story where (maybe it was just me) I was throwing my arms up in the air thinking why oh why are you telling me this I already know it, I've already done it, or when you Just too many little things put me off being fully immersed in a JC alliance commander and that's what I main. The double edged sword of a one size fits all story is ending up as a one size fits none story, so bearing in mind what I said about JK and SW and then completely ignoring it, It's really all down to what class you think fits best into the story and how well it plays for you.

Exactly this, You only have to look at the amount of re-coloured vehicles already in packs to see it. Having said that I do like the idea, especially if it was rolled into cybertech to crafts parts or paints.

Ok so I'm confused why are people saying if you don't want to do the planetary quests then don't? Under the new system they aren't optional anymore they fall under the critical path which means you can't progress the story until you've done it. The heroics and side quests remain as they've always been optional but if you're starting a new character you'll now be doing both class and planetary before being able to move on. Unless I misread the dev blog.

get to level 60 and you won't need help nothing will touch you

Now there's a very good point i hadn't considered, at a guess i'd say since its end of July before the first reward checkpoint that we should have at least some questions answered but i'd put money on not all sections of the community (Raiders, PvPers, Roleplayers in particular) having all the questions they want answered.

All fixed. And moving on with a more positive attitude

Ah i see what they meant now thanks. I was just assuming that we'd get at least part of the story before hand and the rest/major bits filled in through the course of actually playing the story, i can't see them releasing the entire story and potential spoilers before its even out, especially if something big and significant did happen during that time.

Am I missing what this whole roleplay thing is about? You're playing a character whose been frozen for X amount of years and has missed everything that has happened, so surely you need to know less not more about what happened in those intervening years?

All we really have is speculation at this point. We do have some information from the dev’s but like a lot of people have said October is a long way off yet. Things are likely to change development wise in that time. Truth be told until we actually all get to play this absolutely everything is speculation, I can’t see us getting a full list of every changed quest or anything like that. As much as i do enjoy speculating i have a whole lot of game to get through already so i'm trying to not over think it all and enjoy what we do have already.

The way i see it is that repurpsoing it is either going to be slotting in relevent planetary quests to class chains to beef them up a bit i.e. "enchanced class quests" we've heard about or using them for the new factional quests to gain companions etc. Maybe even a combination of both.

This announcement does sound interesting but I took a step back and looked at my characters and achievements earlier on and I realised there are whole swathes of the game I haven’t touched especially with the 12xp on. With that in mind I’m kinda just ignoring all this for now as well relatively little information at this point anyway and just getting on playing the game. I had a quick look through the thread and I find it hard to believe people are having disagreements when we don't actually know a whole lot just yet. We don't know what exactly is going to happen with class and world story arcs, we don't know how daily areas, flashpoints, ops, the current expansions and old endgame content are all going to fit together. One thing this does explain is some of the dev silence recently guess they were kinda busy huh

On the other side of that though if you're only playing a class for the story you're unlikely to be doing grouped content endgame anyway so it doesn't really matter. That being said I do agree that its not desirable to have no gear no idea characters running around in an endgame group, if endgame is your goal with your character take your time to play through some of the solo stuff first and at least make the effort to TRY and learn your classes strengths and weaknesses

Pretty much all the armour in game http://tor-fashion.com/ along with where to get it and if its modable

Having just finished playing through with my gunslinger I was thinking about the saber skills, blaster whip and dirty kick keep their usefulness even into higher end content to quickly finish off anything that runs in close without having to waste resources on a main rotation skill, or to knock something down for a second to reposition. I can't see any reason why the same shouldn't be true for sage/sorc saber skills. Just to be clear I don't want my sage to be jumping in and swinging a saber round as a matter of course, the force is my weapon after all but I would just like for the skills I have to be useful otherwise why bother having them in the first place?

I'll add another thousand times to that as well, unless dps and tank are doing their jobs your healers not going to get a chance to heal you because they'll be too busy trying to keep themselves alive. Just so people don't think think i'm biased i'll admit there are healers/dps and tanks out there that have no clue what they're doing (and often then blame everyone else but themselves for the failure). To the original point though it entirely depends on circumstance, what strength mob your fighting, what level, what gear you have, what classes your group's made up of. Example i ran a lvl50 FP the other week with a tank and dps companion and two heal players off-dpsing. That worked far better than the useless tank and dps players we started with who didn't know what target priority even meant when we told them what they were doing wrong. Probably didn't help that the guardian tank didn't have soresh form up, was guarding no one and had several k less health than me a squishy seer sage with nothing more than tionese level gear on /RantOver.

related to this is tanks not using their tank stance, often a result of impatient dps queueing as tank so they can get a group quiicker. that's a pretty comprehensive list of the most frequent problems, and ultimately i think rather than it being a purely pug issue it's just one of players not knowing what their role is and how they're supposed to be playing to fill that role. understandable while levelling and still learning your role but at level 50 those sort of issues should have been ironed out of your playing, i've been part of some very efficient groups that have said hi and that's it until thanking each other for a good run because everyone knows what they should be doing and actually do it.

Recently i've been running into a situation where some members of a group are wanting to just race through content on flashpoints rather than doing bonuses or sitting through the conversations and cut scenes. what's need is an option to flag you as wanting to do all that stuff or just spacebar everything so groups that want to do the same thing are put together

With 2.0 sage dps seems to be moving a little closer to other dps classes, at least from the admittedly limited time i've spent playing around on pts. but thats just purely from what i've noticed in general combat rather than running anything past dummies.

Firstly you didn't say what companions you are using. you need to create a full group tank healer and 2 dps, my suggestion would be healer uses tank as its easier to mange abilities and healing effects on it that way. they need to to be geared to the right level as well since companions don't have the deep skill sets of players gearing is what makes them makes them more or less effective. You need to prioritise targets like a group would as well, which leads into the next thing CC. Has to be used, no way around it with only two of you so all companions aoe's need to be off unless your up against single targets. It can be done, some will be more difficult than others and since you say the healers only lvl44 there will be some of the critical healing skills missing since your wife won't have the points to put into the tree yet. Healer sage does have good versatility though, i ran a lvl 50 h4 today with another healer sage both of us off DPSing using a tank and dps companion, both of us had nothing more than 1 columni peice being mostly tionese, once your wife gets her sages level up a bit and into better gear you really won't run into too many problems with that combo. hope that helps

i wont be abandoning my sage but i may spend a bit more time with my alts which are all still at lvl10. tbh I'm not sure my dps is going to take that much of a hit, and I've been wanting to try other specs anyway (currently hybrid) plus I've noticed my play style may be more geared towards full telekinetic anyway as I only play PvE and tend to play canon rather than a runner/DOTer.