I'd rather see it eliminated entirely or for the "excellent protection" and such actually mean something.

So with Makeb approaching I decided I'd make a post about several quality of life and convenience changes that should be added and my reasoning for doing so. 1. Ability to send at least 6 companions out on crew skills at 55. I understand the idea of leaving us at with at least one companion to quest with but with HK added we now have an extra body to use for various crew skills missions, it leaves me with an extra companion sitting around doing nothing. This should be implemented for players that are level 55 or a purchasable unlock for f2p. 2. Ability to dismiss/summon companions in combat. Let me preface by saying we should only be able to do this once while in combat, i.e. can only summon once or dismiss once, not both. This is mainly because if you send your companion out to sell trash items, when they are done, you can't summon them back while you're in combat, so if you want to keep going you have to pause rather then just keep going with your companion jumping right back in to battle when they return. 3. Remove orbital stations entirely. This is just needless busy work, move the questgivers on orbital stations for the various planets (hoth, belsavis, voss, etc.) and just put them on the surface. 4. Allow us to enter phases in combat. We should have always been able to do this, I don't understand why we can't, we should be allowed to just run past the mobs in front and go directly in to our phases. 5. Remove the ability for players and monsters to knock you off your speeder. Again something that should have been done ages ago, the whole "excellent protection from being knocked off" hardly applies when a stiff breeze can knock you to the floor not to mention if you get knocked off your mount in combat your buffs are NOT applied to your companion when they appear. Again, when there are planets that have no clear path between objectives (voss and belsavis come to mind) we should be able to just run through without having to worry about getting knocked off our mount. On the subject of monsters: 6. Tone down/remove the ridiculous amount of enemy knockbacks (especially the knockbacks), stuns, and snares. Certain enemy types like nemesis, harbringers, anti armor sentries, flame infused, and pyromechs have a very large number of aoe knockbacks that severely hamper melee players but ranged players (especially ones using a melee tank companion) never have to worry about them ever if they play their class correctly. Rather then adding more give us mostly melee focused players a break by either A) removing them entirely (the best solution honestly) B) give them a long enough cast time so we can stun/interrupt or C) add resolve to PVE, i.e. once non-champion/boss monsters knockback/stun/snare you, you become entirely immune to them until you're out of combat with that monster. 7. More ship customization and in that sense I mean, if we have invested in the full level 7 ship upgrades, I would like the exterior of my ship to reflect that, heavier looking body, a little more bulky in appearance, larger guns, etc. Aside from these major changes I can think of a few other thimgs, mainly more bug fixes and QA before patches go live, more missions that involve your whole crew with all of you working as a team, and while I could go on, the above are the changes I feel are most needed.

I'd presume cartel shop items and bug fixes, that's about it.

Pretty much this.

It would need to be an instanced PVP off zone, those of us on pvp servers would be aoeing each other in addition to the monsters. It would be way too chaotic since the players would eventually forget about the mobs and start killing each other instead.

The starting leveling greens should be slightly higher in stats compared to dread guard with no set bonus, but by the time you hit 54-55, the greens should be significantly better leading up to whatever the new operations are. I am all for trivializing old content and moving on, once I'm 55 I don't ever want to have to go back to TFB or EC HM/NiM modes again, I'd rather move forward on to new content without having to look back save for occasionally running it for nostalgia.

I was able to pick up the bind on legacy item using my republic alt for my imperial main, said republic alt was obviously not on the quest, so I'll have to say yes, anyone can loot it.

Well that's stupid, the notes made it sound like I could just buy the set from the vendor. The GTN prices are unreasonable, I don't need the black hole comms but I sort of hoped to just buy the set anyway to try the new missions.

In the patch notes: I've checked both vendors and there are no grade 7 available for credits. Am I missing something here? Anyone have any ideas where I can find them?

Yes, it is down.

I'd rather see the story move forward.

I think when they talk of "re-hiring" they mean all the companion VA's in addition to the main character VA's. Hiring the 8 main VA's to spout some additional lines wouldn't be that costly, but I can see how hiring all the companions and having them record conversations with each other could be annoying. With the exception of certain companions, Khem Val, Broonmark, Blizz, Qyzen, and the JK's droid (I forget the name) just use the same sound effects in different order, just a matter of typing up the subtitles.

If they add different races then I want different voice options for the classes and the companions to. =/

They talked about it in the livestream not too long ago, to keep it short and sweet. It will take months for it to be implemented.

If the majority of the group wants to skip, you skip. If the majority of the group does not want to skip, you don't skip. Don't be selfish, one way or the other.

Please give me the option keep it open when I send a companion out, just a minor quality of life improvement idea but it gets really irritating when I have my various crew skills running during the day.

I disagree on increasing the spawn rate, but I do agree it needs to be fixed. Better solution: Make every monster in there drop the quest item required, reduce the required codes from 4 to 2, this daily is fixed without a need to change spawn timers and needing to fight monsters on your way out. This should be fixed in the same way above, lowering the items required to complete it, problem solved. Adding more leaders and npc's per cell and reducing the number required for completion along with fixing the respawn bug fixes this. Most definitely agree with you 100% here, this zone needs to lose 50-75% of the useless mobs hanging around and they need to allow us to enter phases in combat.

I can confirm he gains affection in the rakghoul outbreak convos (Lost Island quest ending is the one I brought him in for) if you make choices he likes about killing other people and talking about how powerful you are.

OP are you empire or republic? I didn't notice if you stated in the post. HM foundry is really easy so long as HK47 doesn't bug on you but, having never done the republic equivalent, is it harder? Same? I'm genuinely curious.

I'm a jugg tank and only ever used my healer until I started using HK, I don't plan on ever switching back once I figured out how to use HK's true potential. The best advice I can give people: Don't knock him until you try him. He mauls everything in his path and has a special out of combat ability he can use which instantly kills any mob that is Strong or weaker. If you honestly think he's useless and don't have him, you can't make that assertion. If you have him and still honestly think he's useless? You aren't using him correctly.

For starters if someone goes from 100% to 0% it means they screwed up, not you. That being said, it's not about sightseeing (I pride myself on my raidwide situational awareness, I keep an eye on everything around me while tanking, constantly moving my camera while hitting my keys and binds) so much as once you know the mechanics, someone dying or a wipe can easily be discerned. I.E. During this phase if you don't do X you die, someone dies during that phase, obviously they didn't do X and died. I can forgive a person if they never did it before, but after one wipe you shouldn't be making the same mistakes and should be able to recognize why someone dies during a specific phase near instantly.

The guides you read are wrong then. I obtained the item in FE normal mode, only HM foundry is required.

Nah, the last dialogue is the same as all the other companions in the game: "Serve you for life, preserve your legacy, etc."

The last one is around 7-8k affection, you get some credits, and some dark side points based on your choices.

I don't judge people based on their playstyle, if the boss dies at a reasonable speed and no one dies to avoidable damage I'm satisfied. The only major pet peeve that marks a bad player is during or after a wipe and some idiot asks "what happened?" Pay attention to what's going on around you, the answer to that question is usually pretty obvious.