Screw this. I always watch cutscenes (once, not every time if there's a wipe) in operations. The taunting by Styrak in SnV. Kephess returning. Getting the drop like Luke in RotJ. Great stuff.

I think this is pretty well established by now. Shift to solo-only gameplay in a poorly optimized MMO engine was the original wound though.

I walked by the fleet NPC that starts the Oricon story line last night and it was gold. Took me a while to find it since it was hidden on my map. Do you have a screen shot of it being purple? Perhaps a warning "this story line ends in operations" would be appropriate on the NPC.

Highlighted in bold is the key point. Golden. It's an optional quest. Do you feel the same about the quests for EV, KP, Explosive conflict, Terror from Beyond, Scum and Villany, Ravagers, Gods from the Machine? Stick the main purple story line if that's your playstyle and let us operations players have some story to go along with our Ops. So you can abandon the quest, watch a couple YT videos, and get basically the same experience since this optional story path isn't required to progress your character down the main story. Otherwise each operation takes less than an hour full, or like 15 minutes and you can be carried through the last boss fight when someone is doing a last boss lockout.

I do it every week. Story Mode is faceroll easy and drops 242 gear which is quite nice. HM drops 248 gear which is best in slot, but requires a highly competent group.

It's all about delivery and community. At launch I played the heck out of HM flashpoints to gear up alongside gearing in Operations since they dropped unassembled token gear (remember HM LI dropping best in slot chest piece?). With 2.0 I played the heck out of HM flashpoints to gear up alongside operations since they dropped unassembled token gear. With 3.0 I played the heck out of HM flashpoints to gear up alongside operations since they dropped unassembled token gear. Notice a trend there? With Umbara it doesn't drop token gear and so I just keep running operations. They should have held MM back until 6.0 and hopefully release a full patch with a new story planet, dailies, HM flashpoints dropping token gear, and new operations. Then I would play the heck out of HM flashpoints in 6.0 to gear up alongside operations since they drop unassembled token gear. But to be honest gearing isn't really the reason I play, but I have to gear to do NiM and the new HM gods. But the community is so decimated since KOTFE/KOTET/RNG that I don't have nearly as many friends that are capable of doing anything of any marginal difficulty simply for fun.

Iokath is the pre-requisite. The only thing you need to do Iokath is be level 70.

I recall having to go into the bitraider folder, and deleting a swtor subfolder prior to uninstallng bitraider. Otherwise yeah it always thought it was still in use. Edit from top upvoted comment in reddit ( ): GET BITRAIDER OFF YOUR SYSTEM Go to: C:\Users\Public\Documents Delete the Bitraider folder Uninstall Bitraider via the normal means That one folder contains the files that makes Bitraider think it's still in use by SWTOR, and prevents the un-installation. Finally... sleep better at night.

I agree with you on rewards. Dropping no gear, or gear below what is required/recommended to do the instance is not encouraging. Battle of Rishi and Manaan bonus bosses are two of my all time favorites.

The 2nd fix works for me. At least starparse can now read last night's logs now.

That dude shouldn't even have an option to live, nonetheless romance.

Isotopes have become vendor trash. It's about time (or probably too late) they were made endgame rare crafting mats like designed.

I don't know how to do that. Another option is I can grind out 75 million credits for the set on the GTN. Or if they put it up for direct sale for $10 I'm game, since that's minutes of real life work for me or my wife. And there is no RNG involved.

Have you seen prices? The market was becoming saturated so bad they're almost vendor trash (slight exaggeration of course). With people solo'ing vets I agree with the recent removal.

I leveled my first new character since like 12xp back in 2014, and just finished the base class story. Mostly to get a mirror assassin since republic side is more dead than imperial side for raiding. Anyway, since I have max legacy presence, I thought I'd make boss fights more difficult by solo'ing and only using green gear from the story. It was still pretty easy, partly since I was overleveled due to running some Ops after hitting 50 (with extra passives and such) but my biggest complaint was that I could not keep my companion dismissed. I'd dismiss, and he would always show back up after cut scenes. I put him on passive, so the fight was the same, but it was quite annoying having him shadow me and wreck the visuals of the fights. This seems to be a complaint dating back to launch (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=133413&highlight=companion+dismiss). With how easy you've made leveling in this game, can you give the option to permanently dismiss companions?

I was under the impression story is written very far in advance, so there should be plenty of time to get voice recordings. Thus, I don't think schedule/timeline is the issue. If it's budget EA needs to man up and support this game. For the main character at least. I understand why they went to new companions driving the story, instead of having all 40 others contribute in their unique way. So they should just hang up the game before going silent protagonist.

I see you brought back reusables, but only for those with Biochem, after removing them a few years ago for good reason. I'm bumping my suggestion that you keep stims as they were, with 8 hour timers not being removed on death, and change the advanced adrenals and medpacs to be reusable within a time frame (e.g. 4 hours) and not require biochem to use. This would give an advantage to more expensive material costs, keep a market for crafters, etc.

The issue is possibly that you or someone in your group had one of the other difficulties in your quest log, probably even just the automatic quest for story advancement? That would prevent taking on the MM difficulty "quest" you get when entering the instance. This has been a common issue for a long time for people that default get a solo/story version, then try to queue for vet mode. I would guess that those that didn't have a problem never did Iokath. Agree this is something that should have been apparent in player testing, had that occurred.

Removing iso from vets is fine by me. Maybe the price will go up so I can offload the 100 or so I have hanging out.

I'm confused. Bioware stated they balanced based on dps/hps numbers. I observed that there was class imbalance leaning to some of the classes that got nerfed. To me this suggests that both bioware and the playerbase realized that some classes outperformed others in dps/hps. Therefore nerfing was justified and may have also encouraged players to switch to a class they may prefer that was previously underperforming. Argue all you want they should have buffed others and made content easier, or buffed content as well. I disagree but that's still a valid position to take and debate.

Yeah I made a suggestion along time ago to bring them back, but differently. For adrenals/medpacs, have them be reusable within a 3 hour window (or something to account for a raid night). Not expressed but they would have been useable by all. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=789560

It likely has something to do with: The amount of damage which is shielded will now be displayed in the combat log as intended.

Ugh this would be a disaster. marekdusek hasn't logged in since last December and I'm pretty sure is not active. He did updated this spring with the new operation bosses, so hopefully is willing to address this issue through his site.

This hasn't been true for years.

The nerfs may have been good for the game. Looking at the starparse statistics there was terrible imbalance in class choice in PVE. Mercs and Sorc healers were disproportionately represented earlier in the summer. > 50% of healers were sorcs, and over 33% of all damage dealers were mercs! Since the nerfs, there is more balance in class choice among those using starparse. Now, it's possible all the mercs/sorc healers rage quit with the nerfs creating balance by removing themselves from the pool. Or there was just a general reduction in playerbase at the same time as a rebalancing in class choice. I think it's a general loss of playerbase and a reshuffling due to balance changes. I don't follow the PVP meta so am not commenting on those issues.