I can think of a number of reasons to flirt without changing teams. Maybe not as a dark lord of the Sith but being a Smuggler, Agent or Bounty Hunter? I mean, listen, if it's going to get me some extra credits, info or credits (respectively), you better believe I'm turning on the charm.

Ok, I'll reiterate my counter points to you since you have presented the only voice that wasn't just "I don't want to have to look at the gay": A) I agree it is not malleable and I agree with A-1, but A-2 I think is a point of contention. You can add flirt options without making them the only way to interact with a character. DA2 sucked for this. ME2 was much better. B) Agreed C) Yes, but just because they are offended does not mean they need to be catered to. Like it or not there are those offended by the racism of the empire. It should be no more subject to removal than this. D) I group up for planetary quests. Darth Lachis is a good example of someone you can end up flirting with during group play. I am not saying that I am insulted by the fact that some people only want to play hetero characters. However you can easily do this by just NOT flirting with the same gender. It takes no more effort than NOT picking the flirt option. Ideally Bioware has enough sense to not make flirt the only amicable option in a conversation. The problem I have is that by playing a character I discover their sexuality in the same what that I discover their personality. I thought I was going to play a dark side bounty hunter but I found that Mako's opinion really mattered to me. Hello light side points. I thought I would play a balanced Sorc but people just constantly were begging to get shocked. Hello dark side points. I also thought the Sorc was a lesbian, but damn it Andronikus and her just had so much chemistry. Maybe I'm a little too into the game in that way. But for me picking the sexuality of the character breaks the immersion, and I imagine it is the same for other people. I'm also worried about the implementation. These kinds of changes are inevitably fraught with bugs. Instead of just turning it all on you are adding numerous checks elsewhere in the code for the gay/notgay track. Also, you'll eventually need a 3rd track for the undecided/bi folks. It just becomes increasingly complex as you try to please more people when the most simple solution is the most obvious. Give people the option to flirt. Let them skip it if they want.

Well, let's see. Knock backs have always been considered a form of CC, because if you have a CROWD it lets you CONTROL them (namely their placement). In a game where you can literally kill someone with placement I'd say it's a pretty powerful attack. In fact I get more use out of it in Huttball than Electrocute and definitely more than Whirlwind. Overload is specifically useful for either getting people off of you or even better for putting other people out of position. Reviv heals a lot more because even on 4 targets it heals for a lot more. Per-target it heals more in 1/2 its duration than the other AoEs do in their full duration. And finally, unless your "many years of MMOs" started with WoW you should know what a mez is. It is "mesmerizing" the target. There are 2 axis of CC. On one you have hard/soft CC. Hard CC makes it impossible for you to control your character. Soft CC makes it more difficult. Also there are breakable CCs and unbreakable CCs. Breakables will release you from CC if you take damage (or healing in some games). Unbreakables last their full duration even through damage. Mez was a type of hard-breakable CC from early games. EQ had it on enchanters, but I've played MUDDs that used the term, so who knows how old it is. Whirlwind is a "mez". Electrocute is a stun (hard/unbreakable). Force slow is a slow (soft/unbreakable). Overload is a knockback (soft/unbreakable). I wouldn't really expect the newer gen of MMO players to know the term, though. I haven't heard it myself in about 8 or 9 years.

Wait... did someone get redacted while I was in the middle of replying to them?

Because the NPCs should not be taking my character's sexual identity into consideration when they decide to flirt or not flirt. If I walk up to them on the street they shouldn't have any assumption of my sexuality. The game should mirror reality in that regard. If your character is not comfortable flirting with someone of the same gender, that's cool. There are other conversation options. Expunging those options is ridiculous, though. Nearly as ridiculous as asking why there isn't a button to remove all of the alien race models and references from the game and make everyone human. The entire idea of a toggle is redundant and pretty dumb. If you don't want to flirt no one is forcing you to. If you do want to flirt, those options will be open to you. But a toggle gives your character no more freedom or choices. Instead it just eliminates these things. And for what reason again? I have yet to hear one articulated that is not based upon real world politics and prejudices.

I once was running behind someone in Void Star when we went to cross the bridges. I'm a Sorc healer so I had him targeted. Enemy sage runs up and does their version of overload to knock him off the bridge. As he's flying I hit Extricate and pull him back to safety. I have wanted to do it every game since I first saw what that WZ looked like, that was the only time I did it successfully.

I have a few issues with it. First and foremost, the when playing a character their sexuality isn't something that I pick when I pick their class. It is something that I get a sense of as I play through on the character. If I just picked it in the beginning, yeah, my SI would be all over Ashara like it was their last night alive. She's hot and I like women. But given how I played my Sorc it just made more sense for her to gravitate toward Andronikus. Something that can't be predicted at character creation and shouldn't be precluded then either. Second, it brings the issue of the character's sexuality to the forefront in a way that I think is just inappropriate. I don't mean inappropriate in a "crap, now I have to talk to my hypothetical kids about fantasy gender interactions and inter-species sex". I mean that it is asking a question that is best discovered and explored within the context of the game itself. I guess it refers back to my first point a bit, but when you roll a character you are not asked about their feelings on things because you are supposed to PLAY their feelings on things. You don't check a box that says "Sith who hates the Empire" or "Jedi Sith Apologist" at the beginning of your story. You are presented with conversation options and you choose the one that best fits your mood at that time. It is, within the obvious limitations of a game world, like being alive. You are who you are because of what you say, do and think. Not because you decided to be who you are 6 months ago. This relates to your point about "constantly choosing" an orientation. People already do this. Every time you talk to someone you have the option to flirt. You choose not to for a variety of reasons. Obviously there cannot be a constant "flirt entirely inappropriately" button in the game because then they would have to code the reactions to the constant flirtation. But when a flirt option appears and you decide not to take it you are not "constantly choosing" anything. You have already chosen. All that remains is to act. Finally, I prefer not to kowtow to the lowest common denominator. I want the game to be immersive and "realistic" in its representation of people. I want there to be gays and the homophobes to go with them. I want there to be racial slurs to go with the different races. I like the Darth Fatty model and I want there to be one for females and with that I want there to be NPCs who comment negatively on your size because they're jerks. It is this underutilized essense of the real world that never makes it to games and really should. But that is a musing/suggestion for a different thread.

That is not what a toggle does. I'm straight. I walk into a bar I have the option to flirt with whomever I want. My sexuality is preselected, my actions are still unlimited. Likewise, in the game, you select your sexuality when you decide you want the character to be gay/straight/bi. You walk over to your companion and you have the option to flirt. Whether or not you choose to exercise that option is entirely up to you. Asking for a toggle is not the same as asking for the option to make your character gay/straight/bi/asexual. Asking for a toggle is asking for the ability to remove the appearance of homosexuality from the game. At least be honest enough to admit that that is what you are asking for.

Now, to the topic at hand, SGR toggle and what it means for the game: What the community asked for was the option of SGR because it allowed those players to more closely fit the way their character acted in game to the way they imagined them in their own mind. A toggle is NOT equivalent. A toggle allows the player to change the world around them to better fit their ideal. If you want to play a straight character you are free to do so. If you want to live in a world where everyone is straight you are looking at a completely different request. Likewise, if SGR is enabled for every companion/NPC I will have a problem with that. Yes, I know it will suck that you want your Female Jedi Knight to make sweet sweet love to Kira, but the previous paragraph goes both ways. You cannot just whitewash all of the STRAIGHT characters out of the game because you enjoy playing a bisexual nympho. The game world should strive for immersion and with that comes a minority of LGBT characters mixed in with the plethora of straight ones, just like it is a majority of humans.

My computer was 900, the video card was 150. I get 65+ FPS. I don't know what to tell you, man. My last card did have problems, I replaced it because particle effects were kicking its ***. 550ti and everything is better.

First off... you haven't done "the job". You've passed the interview. The job is completely nightmare mode content. You, as of your original posting, are 0/10 nightmare mode. You have no experience from which to draw upon. You think hardmodes are hard? That's a joke. We take our fresh 50s into hardmode ops to show them the mechanics and gear them up. It takes 2 of our core DPS and 1 core healer to carry an 8 man raid through Hardmode content. On top of that, yes, someone getting the job done with half effort IS something to complain about. You shouldn't need to work 2x as hard for the same rewards. There is a margin of error for class balance. Bioware is well outside of it. There is literally nothing an Operative healer is better for. That is a failure of the class design team that needs to be addressed. I get that it's the "cool" thing to do to be all stiff upper lip about the imbalance, but it is a legitimate and serious problem with the game, as significant as any boss or terrain bug and it should be addressed as such.

You are level 40 according to your signature. Get to 50, you will understand. The current scaling of level 1-49 players gives them much higher healing and damage numbers. On top of that the true force of Sorc healers is in the diversity of their abilities, which are unavailable largely until the mid 30s - early 40s. The scaling factor of the 1-49 brackets wildly skews your results. If you don't believe me, check the numbers. Keep track of how much HP/Damage/Healing you have right now and compare it to what you get at 50, even with decent gear

Nightmre mode Soa, definitely. Everything else is easy as hell compared to that mess. There is simply so much damage going out and currently on hard/nightmare modes he will bug out from time to time and attack random people. It isn't too bad except that it lets him mind-trap/toss our tank. Nothing else is even remotely as difficult.

Except these threads are met with overwhelming disapproval, constant down votes and consistent mockery. You aren't "enlightening" anyone. You have an opinion based upon your desire to play the FotM class more readily than is currently available. Others are concerned with things like game balance and the sustainability of the system. You've taken the idea that what you want is what is best as a foregone conclusion. It isn't. It's a stupid idea, the majority of people weighing in on the issue have said as much since the first time it was brought up, and your crappy reasoning isn't winning anyone else over. I don't understand where the disconnect is. Sometimes you have an idea that sounds great to you but is actually a turd. No matter how much you polish that turd it doesn't turn into a diamond. We aren't talking about something revolutionary, either. It's a very simple concept that you are suggesting. It just happens to be a very unpopular one as well. Everyone understands what you want. They understand your reasoning. They understand the benefits as you have laid them out. And they have weighed them against the dozens of counter arguments they have presented you with and decided that your idea sucks, the same way they did the first 20 times it was suggested. We get it. You don't want to do the class missions over again. If you frame the ACs in a kind of "Ship of Theseus" manner they aren't really so different after all. Play style doesn't denote class. Sometimes people just want a taste of a different flavor. It's the same as respeccing from Holy to Prot in WoW! Blah, blah, blah. It's the same crap spit out over and over again. And you always get the same responses: 1) ACs are unique enough to constitute different classes. There is ability overlap, for sure, but no more than would be in any other MMO between two otherwise entirely different classes. 2) Allowing swaps between ACs would lead to a sharp decline in the player population of the "lesser" class, no matter how negligible the difference between the two was, because people will always min-max toward FotM. 3) The play styles are vastly different between ACs with the arguable exception of Mar/Jug/Sent/Guard. 4) Considering Ops is more like Sin than it is Sniper you could just as easily slide down the slope and allow full class respecs, which is obviously ludicrous on its face but actually makes more sense than most AC respecs. etc., etc., etc.

Yes... the people who have specifically given up their ability to directly eliminate other players in favor of the ability to allow their teammates to engage in longer battles and recover more quickly also directly benefit from that choice.

I didn't say it was overpowered. What I said is that the game is balanced around penalizing you for going into PvP combat. It is specifically a factor of that that keeps you from healing. Why would they introduce anything to mitigate that? They WANT it to be a pain in the *** to heal from PvP combat. They WANT you to need your healers to stay alive, use medpacks on CD (which means sometimes running around a corner to get the few seconds of relief you need to survive til they come off CD is the better strategic move), and stay out of the fight for an extended period of time if you want to fully recover. I do get that you've got this weird mental block where everyone who does not agree with you must be bad or must roll Merc/Sorc or some other dismissal, but it is entirely possible for us to just think that you're wrong. We don't agree. We never will. You see getting back into the fight as the entire premise around which PvP is based. I just don't and no amount of insult hurling is going to change that. Unless you have some kind of reasonable or rational explanation, your otherwise frothing rants are never going to win over those of us on the other side.

I wouldn't worry too much about that. If you assume that the next level of content is roughly equivalent to the hard modes of the current, and drops equivalent gear what you really run into is that the Ops/BH will just not be able to go through the nightmare modes as early as Sorcs.

No. They introduce it with a lengthy explanation of how this is changing your class and deciding on your play style forever more. You are given 10 levels to get comfortable with the controls before you make the decision. If this has taught us anything, though, it is that the choice should either be from level 1 or at level 20+ to give people more time. And now I present to you: Charge v Feral Charge Demo Shout v Demo Roar Holy Light v. Greater Heal Time Warp v Bloodlust/Heroism Howl of Terror v Psychic Scream and this list could get ridiculously long. The point is that the classes DO share abilities, but Blizzard was kind enough to rename them between classes, presumable so that while the average monkey can tell they're the same thing some of the dumber monkeys might not realize they are using the same abilities for different classes. And while those two SPECIFIC ACs play similarly to each other (Like Prot Warriors and Tanking Feral Druids), they are actually quite different. In fact, there are more similarities between the Feral Tanking Druid and the Prot Warrior then between the Jugg and Marauder when it comes to game play, rotation, etc. When you compare Sin/Sorc, PT/Merc and Op/Sniper the entire thing becomes even more ridiculous. They share a resource, sure, and some of the abilities are shared, ok. But being on the list and being useful are two entirely different things. Force Lightning is not showing up in an Assassin build. Rocket Punch just doesn't factor in for Mercs. And if you think Shiv made its way into a Sniper's DPS rotation you've got to be kidding. The abilities exist to give you a taste of the play styles before committing to one. That is their stated purpose from Bioware and for most people that seems pretty clear. For some others, though, the strain of not being able to go from Balance Druid to Affliction Warlock (Because insect swarm and corruption are pretty much the same thing, amirite?) seems to be too much

So you define the class by their story, not at all by their play style? Classes are, in every game, defined by the skills, attributes, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and general play style that define them. I get that you are trying to buck the trend but the only reason you are even asking for this is because they let you make the choice at level 10 instead of level 1. If they created the typical MMO experience of every class having the same story, or even if they just gave 8 base classes and paired them off as they already have you would realize how dumb this suggestion is.

Let's see. WoW classes at launch Hunter Druid Mage Warlock Warrior Paladin/Shaman depending on faction Priest Rogue And that does not even take into account that during Vanilla the explicit stated design was that any class that could heal would be religated to healing in raids and that pure DPS classes should have higher DPS than any hybrids HALF of the classes could ONLY DPS 8 classes. 4 of them are limited to ONLY DPSing.

That's the point of this thread. A couple of ability tweeks and you end up with some viability.

It's still a stupid idea. An Assasin shares far more in common with the play style of a Juggernaut than it does with a Sorc. The Mercenary is closer in play style to the Sorc than the Assassin has ever been. The ACs are diverse enough from each other that they more resemble other classes than they do the opposing AC from the same class. What you have shared are a core of maybe 10 abilities, most of which end up falling by the wayside before the end of the game.

Currently Op/Smug and BH/Com have to take a back seat to Sorc/Sage healing. Everyone complains about Sorcs being OP (except for about 50% of the Sorc population who enjoy it and thus pretend the problem doesn't exist). Most disappointing is the lack of attention from Devs. I figure if this gets enough upvotes we can perhaps get someone to take a look. I think the issue is with the other classes, though. They lack a lot of the utility of Sorc/Sage and they could recover some of it easily with a few small changes. I'll use the Imp names for brevity, but the point should be clear: 1) Make Kolto Shell something you can apply to more than one person. It still won't be a "shield" but it will be much more useful than it is currently. 2) Give Ops the same Ballistic Shell as Snipers. It's a high utility defensive move and more importantly something unique that they can bring to an operation. It's nothing overwhelming but definitely a plus. 3) Give all AoE heals the same 8 target cap as the Sorcs. Without smart healing you can fire that Kolto Bomb and hit 3 people with full HP. Obviously this is a huge imbalance because I can easily drop the purple circle and watch my entire operation begin to rapidly recover their health. Edit: If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you can rate a thread. Try rating more often and you will see fewer 5-star/1rating threads and more threads that reflect the tenor of the forums (which are admittedly like 1% of the player base).

Try nightmare mode. We actually found normals easier with Ops/Sorc because the Op was so much better than our second Sorc and the level of difficulty was a joke. Hardmodes the Sorc became a bit more of a feature. Nightmare Modes the kit does the job. It just does. The amount of damage going out on Nightmare Mode Soa is insane. For point of reference, our last hardmode run we had him bug out and throw our tank into a mind trap. I healed a DPS sorc through his direct damage and the lightning balls. On nightmare mode the power tech off-tank in better gear got 2 shot. With increased damage comes a lot of increased pressure. Also, I want to be clear. I think the Nerf is coming because Nerfs are more common (and easier to balance) than buffs. I really believe, though, that 3 changes will level the playing field, especially in PvE: Remove the AoE Target caps. Give Ops Balistic Shell just like Snipers Let Kolto Shell be on more than 1 target at a time. Give those 3 things and I would expect all 3 healers become much more viable.

Bring 2 Sage/Sorcs. Leave the Operatives at home. Even a mediocre Sorc is better than an outstanding Operative. The same goes for bounty hunters. Your kits are not good. You pack band-aids, we're like a Mobile Hospital. You bring a tool box. We bring the Home Depot. We heal faster, harder, for longer and recover from the blow to our resources faster and more reliably. Listen, I get it. I have a friend who was hit by a train in the NYC subway. He lost his leg. For him his independence is a big deal, and I respect that. But you don't see him talking about how he's just fine and doesn't need any help. He's handicapped, he knows it, and pretending otherwise causes nothing but more hardship. Ops/BH need buffs. Not HUGE buffs, but a few simple things. Kolto-Shell going on the entire raid is 1. Removing the limits on their AoEs is another. Giving Ops the Sniper dome shield is the last I really see as being necessary to balance the healing classes.