Your logic is faulty. In an MMO the point of doing content is generally to get gear better than you had from doing that content. If you need gear greater than 208 to complete a flashpoint that gives 208 gear... it's not working as intended. If it drops 208 gear you should be able to complete it in gear worse than 208 gear, end of story. This is like saying you need HM raid gear in order to clear a SM raid.

I can confirm this with my guild. My guild was super active before Fallout 4, and activity has yet to recover, yet people log in once in a while saying they'll be back. Many people haven't quit the game but are simply on break from it. And now that Battlefront's out it's gotten worse lol. People will come back.

While flashpoints are great, if you ever want to break up the monotony I have great luck leveling with planetary heroics. They give a ton of XP on top of nice gear if you're below 60.

Considering one of the big draws of KOTFE was you can now use your favorite companion rather than being forced to use one you don't like because it's "the best"... no thank you. Though humorously enough, right now Treek and HK are already performing better than the other companions. Seriously, test them out side by side. This solution is basically already live. And I still hate it.

Yes, exactly this. It's not about the quests being too hard, or needing to "play better", it's about it being BORING! I love dailies and questing and leveling and etc, because it's satisfying to me to churn through the content. Yes, that has always involved knowing how to play my class to maximize profits and time spent, in vanilla, in 2.0, in 3.0, and in 4.0... for the first month. Suddenly, fights are painfully slow, slower than they were at vanilla when I was in Tionese gear with a companion in level 30 gear. There's a problem here. My daily runs went from taking an hour to taking 2+ hours... not fun. Not fun at all. And not challenging either.

I don't need advice how to play, but I also don't appreciate 4 year old quests suddenly becoming so imbalanced that as a tank geared for raids it's possible for me to die on NAR SHADDAA if I accidentally pull an extra group of mobs. It's not about not being able to grasp how to get through the quests, I have yet to see one person claim they can't. I died, rolled my eyes, picked myself up and finished without anymore issues. But do you really think it's reasonable for trash pulls on 4 year old low level planetary heroics to be challenging to a raid geared tank? I don't.

The pro-nerf crowd summed up. I think we should round up the hardcore elitist players and shunt them onto their own server instead. Since in my experience they are WAY in the minority. In this day in age, most MMO players who are not teenage and/or jobless fall into the casual bracket. Most of us simply don't have time to find groups because real life obligations draw us away from the computer frequently. It took me nearly a month to finally finish a heroic star fortress because every group I joined, I kept having to leave midway through because of some family crisis or other. I dislike grouping since I don't want to burden anyone else, not because I'm lazy. Weird right?

And you think it's a GOOD thing for players new to the game to struggle in leveling/solo content? You say "trickier", I say boring and more tedious. There's no real challenge, just a whole lot of downtime and needlessly longer fights. Is it more challenging to go through your rotation twice instead of once?

I have been playing a level 65 darkness assassin in 216 gear, using a Theron Shan with 45 influence. I have been alternating between heal and DPS stance for Theron. Yesterday I did all the planetary heroic +2s to see how they felt with the companion changes. While it is possible to complete all of these missions, I died on several of them because my companion simply couldn't heal enough to keep me alive. (I should point out I never died doing dailies pre-4.0 when I had geared companions.) I died the most often on Belsavis and Nar Shaddaa heroics, namely because some of those missions have pulls involving so many mobs that if my companion gets agro at all, he loses health extremely quickly and stops healing me as he struggles to stay alive. The Makeb heroics also seem imbalanced in the fact the mobs appear to do a lot more damage than any of the other planets. I had to use a lot of CCs to complete those. There was a lot of downtime in the form of resting/healing myself to max after most pulls. When my Theron is in DPS spec, he barely does any damage at all, even on low level planets. Let me put it this way--when I was in tank spec, I could consistently kill a gold mob faster than my influence 45 Theron in DPS spec could kill a silver. Overall experience: Extremely slow, too much downtime between fights to recover, frequent use of Heroic Moments to burn down elite mobs since I felt like my companion was doing no damage, fairly frequent deaths despite being experienced with my class/spec and having 216 gear, overall worse companion experience than 3.0 with Devoted Allies gear.

Even if players were everywhere, some people don't want to group. Solo is a viable option for leveling and dailies. It's a companion issue.

My main issue with the nerfs is that they completely trivialize everything we've been doing since KOTFE launched. The players got used to companions feeling strong, many of us loved the way they felt (combat was more fluid, faster, etc) and many of us spent a lot of time, effort, credits, and comms in leveing our favorite companions to be even stronger. SWTOR has also been heavily touting a more solo/casual experience since the launch of KOTFE and making solo content "harder" most certainly is counter to that. This was also dropped on us with zero testing. It's just done, without any indication the devs may tweak things. I really hope the devs respond, because I feel extremely discouraged right now.

THIS. A whole lot of people came back or subbed for the first time just because SWTOR was touting a more solo/casual-friendly experience, and suddenly the gameplay they got used to has been utterly nuked. I don't blame anyone for unsubbing over this. And the devs requested feedback. They're getting it.

^^^^^^ This. I honestly can't believe people are saying dailies (heroics) need to be hard lol. Come on. I do raids and HM flashpoints when I want a challenge. It's not that I can't do the heroics anymore, I can, they're just a slog now. CC mob, use more CDs, rest after. That's not challenge. It's just adding time to the thing you've done repeatedly.

Where is the challenge? I see no challenge, I see it taking longer to kill mobs. Challenge comes from interesting mechanics, not having to spam more attacks before the mob dies or having to turtle and self heal or blow all your CDs to stay alive and then rest/recharge after every fight. Slow and boring, not challenging. I do group content too. When I do DAILIES and level my 30th character I don't want challenge, I want efficiency. Yep, I agree with you 100%. I can solo them but it is incredibly boring to me now. I guess what I don't get is why the people who complained it was not challenging didn't do as was suggested repeatedly and quest without their companions or put on bad gear. Lots of people clearly loved the companions and those who didn't had the option of not using them. You do realize the topic of my thread is my opinion, right? I'm not speaking for the world here. Do you have an actual argument?

I've been subbed since launch and while I'm too invested in the game to unsub? I am planning on no longer doing any solo content, despite the fact I was having a blast doing solo content with strong companions after KOTFE. But now the slog just isn't worth it. I'm extremely disappointed they listened to the vocal small minority complaining on the forums. I don't know anyone actually in game who was unhappy with the fact companions actually felt strong.

I don't really have a whole lot to say besides that. The game felt VERY fun to me post-4.0 since I could kill things quickly with my companions, and now it feels like a huge slog. I feel like the bar has been set really low by saying if you can still clear Heroic +2s it's working as intended. Yes, I can still clear heroic star fortresses, planetary heroic +2s, etc... but it takes about 3 times as long as it did before. That is not fun. And low level quests, while leveling characters, actually feel way more difficult than they used to. I can handle it as an experienced player, but making leveling content for new players HARDER is not a good thing. Artificially making fights longer on dailies meant to be done repeatedly does not make for more engaging gameplay. This just makes it tedious. Please revise your numbers, Bioware. I can understand the need for a slight nerf but this is truly ridiculous. I honestly feel as if my companions were stronger during Shadow of Revan era. To top it off, I am incredibly frustrated that the companions I got rank 40-50 influence on now feel barely stronger than rank 10 companions. I feel as if I wasted my credits and crystals at this point. TL;DR, I was having a blast with companions that actually felt strong and now they feel as useless as they did at game launch.

Story mode flashpoints have been replaced with tactical flashpoints which have no need of roles. The change occurred because it was nearly impossible to find groups of 2 dps, 1 healer and 1 tank for most of the low level flashpoints once KDY came out. Everyone was spamming KDY and most of the queues for the other SM flashpoints went by the wayside. I think it's a great thing, but I get the initial confusion.

RP guild so we're more focused on people being social than on numbers. And we like to keep our roster current with active members, but if someone gets removed for inactivity all they have to do is message us for a reinvite. If they go missing during their 2 week trial period they're booted at the end of it. Newer members get removed at 30 days inactivity with no notice. Established members get removed at 60 days inactivity with no notice. We have a forum so keeping in touch is super easy. If a member can't be bothered to say "hey I can't play right now", in game or out, in 30-60 days I just get the impression they don't care too much.

This isn't true in the least and considering WoW remains the leader and you can't even log into that game without a subscription... OP, I agree preferred is really bad, so I just simply never play preferred. It costs 50 cents a day to subscribe, and if you can't afford that, at least you can still log in and play the game when preferred. Sub only games don't even allow that much. I agree about the credit cap though. That's the worst.

Members were stuck in their own strongholds too. Like I said, I feel like it's some strange bug with guild strongholds that carries over to everything based on the fact temporarily removing from the guild allowed everyone to log in properly again. But if you're not in a guild, I may be wrong!

Game is better than ever. You and your nebulous "we" were wrong and continue to be wrong. I've been here since launch, but I was kinda bored of everything but crafting and doing dailies to make money to decorate. Now I'm enjoying every aspect of the game again because of all the things you listed as bad. Go figure...

Are you in a guild? I fixed this issue for a bunch of my guild members tonight by temporarily removing their characters from the guild. They were then able to log in and be reinvited. I have no idea why, but this consistently worked for multiple people, including one of my own alts. I'm guessing it's a bug with guild strongholds, even if you're not in one.

Equal may not be the best word. Even though he's pragmatic, Marr was still a Sith adhering to Sith society. However, he did treat both the agent and bounty hunter with incredible respect on both Makeb and Yavin. And more to the main topic of the thread, I am seriously still sad about Marr's death weeks later. He was my favorite NPC in the game.

I'm curious why it matters? And I think you're about to be disappointed, because the entire point of the alliance system is that companions can be recruited by any class.

But you are THE Outlander if it helps.