Dear devs, your customer support team advised me to post this request here as well, so here goes: I run a guild myself, and my biggest wish for an additional feature would actually be the option to have my twinks get the option to automatically join my guild upon creating them and logging in for the first time. On the technical side of things, this should be very, very easy for you to implement, as it is basically just a system-triggered Guild Invite -- this would make the game yet much more enjoyable for me, as right now my guild doesn't really have anyone else actively playing anymore, and I also don't want to have to give any random immediately Officer access to my guild just so they could then invite my Twinks into my own guild. In short: Please give Guild Owners the opportunity to auto-import their own Twinks into their own Guild. Thanks.

Thanks for the link; either way, I agree with the final sentiment in that linked post: Nerfing Elites from 10 to 1 is stupid, especially for "casual" PvE players who now get even less CXP than before, which already was much too little. I myself put in quite some time from the start of Early Access til last Sunday -- I only hit Rank 25 or 26 in all that time, while extreme grinders easily hit level 100+ in less time than that. Rewarding stupid grind mechanics and leaving those of us wanting to play the game the "right" way behind, is a very strange management decision.

Indeed: Dark vs. Light Event Rewards were delivered last week to players who reached the various tiers. Congratulations! We have heard your feedback regarding the Achievements, and we will be returning the Tier Level Achievements. We are fixing Master Ranos recruiting issues in Patch 5.0.1 on Tuesday. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9157802#edit9157802

About right, yeah... you can however access all Flashpoints "manually" directly via their questgiving NPCs, of which the majority are on the Fleet, with some being on their respective planets, i.e. the "Battle for Ilum"-NPC is on Ilum, the "Battle for Rishi"-NPC on Rishi. So this is another way to start FPs in any available difficulty mode including Solo/Storymode, where applicable. Apart from that, you got the gist of it, yes... the same is true for the new Uprisings as well, btw. You can start those either manually via their terminals on the fleet, via the GalCom screen or via the Group Finder in both currently available difficulty modes.

That's completely beside the point. In both cases, Veteran Mode refers to the medium difficulty setting of each game mode. That FPs aren't the same as OPs, no matter the difficulty mode, is self-evident.

Yeah, but the inconsistency was with the old system, whereas the new one, in this one regard at least, is the better approach. In the old system "Hard Mode" meant two vastly different things depending on wether you were referring to FPs or OPs... for FPs it was the highest difficulty, for OPs it was the medium difficulty, but both were called the same despite not being the same at all. With the new system, if you talk about Veteran Mode, everyone will instantly know that you are referring to the medium difficulty setting, no matter the actual gameplay mode, i.e. FPs, OPs or Uprisings. Thus the new system unifies the nomenclature for difficulty modes across all types of gameplay, and that is both much more consistent and much more intuitive than the old system. =)

You're joking, right? The consistency is right there in your post! All easy modes are called Story Mode. All medium difficulty modes are called Veteran Mode. All high difficulty modes are called Master Mode.

Exactly the same bug I'm having on my SI Lvl 70, T3-M4.

Any form of acknowledgement would be very much appreciated indeed... a lot of us put in a lot of effort to get these event achievements completed especially so they would get a new companion.

Yes there is, but like I said two posts above yours, you have to click the Flashpoint icon in the GalCom menu to get that "Do x heroics on planet y"-quest... that is the only one currently affected by the bonus, and upon completion, it will grant you additional CXP. I did it with Oricon, and on top of all the individual (not bonus-affected) rewards I got from the heroics and the weekly, I got an additional 450 CXP for the "Complete 4 Heroics on Oricon"-mission that GalCom gave me. If you only do the heroics in the old way, i.e. by accepting them via the heroics terminal, you miss out on these extra missions giving you the really interesting reward.

You can only queue up for Veteran or Master FPs via the GF, and the system only takes your choice into consideration. I.e. if you deselect everything but Veteran FPs in GF, you will always be grouped with other players who queued for a Veteran FP... outside of severe GF bugs, there is no way that you could ever land in a Master Group while queuing for Veteran and vice versa. Thus if you used the GF and ended up in a Master FP even though you wanted a Veteran FP, then you forgot to deselect Master FPs in the list (remove the square checkmark).

Actually it is "Go press the big center button on your GalCom menu screen" and that's it. Uprisings are meant to be fast-paced, no story (to speak of) content for your quick group action... they play a bit of dialogue, but yeah, that is it. Although some of them unlock additional codex lore entries. Gameplay-wise, some of them are really cool at least. =)

I have thought along those same lines as well... while I did not complete all Alliance Alerts (I hate Qyzen and do not want it anywhere near my alliance lol), I used the Odessen base terminal to bring back some characters both from legacy story as well as some of those that died/left during KotFE, and I also have some Cartel Market companions. To further verify this, could you do the me favor of counting the total amount of companions for one, and the total amount of all companions and contacs that your main has listed? I will do so myself and edit it into this post. Edit: Active (i.e. summonable/useable) companions: 33 Total companions and contacts listed: 47 Number of Alliance Alerts still open: 2 (Major Pierce & Qyzen)

Currently NiM raiding is pretty much impossible to do for any guild, no matter how progress-oriented they are... all OPS have been scaled up to level 70, i.e. NiM OPS will require everyone to be at least fully 234 geared, realistically tho rather even better than that... and aside from some heavy exploit users, there simply aren't any players high enough in the command system to sport a full 234 or better set yet. The formerly BiS 224 gear simply doesn't cut it anymore for NiM.

Yeah, that's true... and I am still royally pissed about the fact that they nerfed gold mobs from 10 to 1 -- fix the individual exploits some players used, finally ban players running bots and bot-like macros, instead of ruining something for all of us just because some few got greedy. But I guess that would require much more work and cost much more resources than simply nerfing the hell out of an at least somewhat sound concept.

Did you create a regular ticket? Creating a bug report would be the more appropriate option, since this way it directly gets to the devs instead of the CS team.^^

How do you queue up precisely? You can do this one of two automatic ways: 1) Via the new GalCom screen (CTRL+G), where you have a dropdown menu box below the big Flashpoint icon to select the difficulty for the flashpoints, ranging from Story over Veteran to Master. Naturally you need to set this before clicking on the big Flashpoint icon. 2) Via the regular group finder, where you can either queue for just Veteran (formerly known as Tactical) or Master (f.k.a. Hard Mode) or for both and the system chooses depending on which difficulty level has a group ready for you fastest. If you only ever get Master FPs when using method 1, use the dropdown menu to change the difficulty; if you only ever get Master FPs when using the second method, you must have only checked the box for Master FPs and not the one for Veteran FPs.

We had the same in S&V 16 people SM run the other day... out of all theoretically eligible characters (i.e. already level 70), one tank didn't get a CXP pack from the first boss while everyone else did.

Hey y'all, another bug report regarding Master Ranos from my side: Bug: Master Ranos did not unlock for my main character after talking to her in the Alliance Base. I did get the Alliance Alert mission however. Character played when encountering the bug: Sith Inquisitor/Sorc, Level 70, previously cleared DvL Event Achievements up to and including Eternal Tier, with Legendary Tier partially completed, KotFE cleared, KotET at that point not yet started. Master Ranos did not unlock for my main after talking to her, even though I chose the appropriate dialogue option and her dialogue along the lines of "It will be weird having to follow orders again, but I'll manage" was played -- after that however, she did not become my active companion, neither did she show up on any of the lists in the "Companions & Contacts" menu. Additionally her NPC disappeared from the Alliance Base and did not show up ever again. I tried using the "Jedi Holocommunicator" item afterwards, but also to no avail... it gave me a red popup warning (like the server alerts) saying "You have already completed this alert" -- Master Ranos however still didn't show up anywhere. On all of my other twinks, I only used the "Jedi Holocommunicator", and for all of them, it worked.

Thanks for the link, I'll take it over there then! =) And yes, it was a Sorc, but DvL Eternal, not Legendary.

Title pretty much says it all... on my main char I used the "Travel to Alert Location" feature from the "Companion" & Contacts" menu and talked to Master Ranos inside the Alliance Base on Odessen. After exhausting every lore fluff dialogue option, I eventually told her that she could join me, and she agreed... but then the NPC simply disappeared from the base, didn't show up as my active companion and also is not listed in the "Companions & Contacts" menu in any of those lists. I then used the Jedi Holocommunicator item, but that didn't work either... it simply gave me the error message that I had already completed this alert mission -- still no Master Ranos for my main. On all of 13 other characters, the unlock worked perfectly fine... just for the main, where I'd actually have used her, it did not work. Anyone else experience this bug? If so, please create a ticket ingame to get the devs as much feedback as possible to find the cause for this. =)

Agreed, see my post above yours as well... one part of the perceived difficulty definitely is the kinds of players having at best mediocre gear but thinking they have any business outside of Story Mode. Just two days ago I had a tank in a Master Flashpoint who was level 67 (and not a token char) without any augments, without crystals in neither main- or offhand... when I asked him if this was just yet another bug of the Inspect Player-system, or if he really was so ridiculously undergeared for Master content, he replied that he didn't care about stuff like that and didn't appreciate my "elitism". Go figure. Of course he's welcome to play the game any way he likes... but thinking he belonged in a Master Difficulty group with gear (and attitude) like that, that's beyond stupid; I actually take offense to that, for the simple reason that players like this drag down their entire group and make unnecessary wipes much more probable. It's basically like showing up for your team's soccer match not wearing shoes and complaining about the other players being elitist when being sent home again.

Yeah, I was 224/220 geared with 224 Main/Offhand on my Sorc doing these solo... while the Sorc of course isn't anywhere near the top of the DPS ladder anymore, having been nerfed for 4.0 and 5.0, but it is still one of the most resilient classes if played right. The gearing now is of course another reason why it might feel more difficult, yes - but I also solo the new Uprisings in story mode, which, truth be told, is much easier than going in via Finder with usually three other DDs. I have not yet tried solo'ing all of them, but at least Fractured and Firebrand are easily doable and that even though the Story Mode Uprisings seem to have a higher level of difficulty than pretty much all of the Veteran flashpoints. Doing a Tactical back with 4.x at Level 65 with 4 DDs was still easy when I was still at gear rating 208/216... doing a Story Mode Uprising now with 4 DDs is annyoing as hell (well at least with most randoms via Finder). Although, now I think about it, most of these random DDs were still insanely low in terms of gear... my Sorc is now mixed 220/224/230, with full Set Bonus, 230 main/offhand... I have just shy of 108k HP, while most of the DD randoms I encountered via GF for SM Uprisings had 90k at best.

You should always do the Heroics via the GalCom menu (CTRL+G), as this gives you an additional quest worth a major CXP reward. I have done so for the first time myself today, with the Planet. Heroics having the CXP bonus... this quest I am talking about gave me 450 CXP on top of the individual rewards from each heroic and weekly (did Oricon). In total it was enough to get me from Rank 24 1/2 to Rank 25 1/4.

Normally I'd agree with you... the only true potential for upsetting the balance in major ways is the fact that PvP now uses the PvE gear - thus, someone exploiting their way to extremely high Command Ranks and getting dozens of chests of equip more than anyone else on the server and also getting higher grade equipment than anyone else on the server would have a sizeable advantage over anyone else on the server in PvP. If this were strictly limited to PvE, I'd agree completely with your statement that it didn't matter... but PvP, even though I personally do not partake, is an entirely different matter in terms of balancing issues.