Not much better... "Wait, what's that in the sand next to the dead pig-man? Why, it's a perfectly good pair of pants someone just discarded here. I guess I'll just roll the dead guy aside and try them on."

I got kinda bored of the Smuggler storyline after Chapter 2. Same with the Bounty Hunter, really. So far, Inquisitor has been my favorite... it really had the best hooks to drive the action through all three chapters.

Wow, really? That's terrible... the whole concept of 'role balance' is just lazy anyway. So long as a group isn't all Tanks or Healers, just about any other composition can work if you effectively strategize. There ought to be a check box to tell it you don't care about composition or full groups. My character is a DPS/Healer, so you'd think that would help, but I guess the tool just doesn't work for BT. Thanks for all the input!

I hate picking over corpses. It's ghoulish. I think instead, loot drops should just be rarer, and inventory in general should be pared down to a few basic items. Why would I want to steal pants off of the dead slime-covered alien pig-man I just shot? It reduces the otherwise heroic figures of the game into loathsome back-alley muggers. It's a terrible game mechanic.

When Group Finder was initially released, I was busy pushing a character through their story, and didn't pay much attention to it. I just started a new character, and was ready to do the Black Talon mission. There were over 150 players listed on the station, and usually I've found if it's over 100 I can easily rotate through the Black Talon with a new character four or five times in a row without much downtime... I'd just call out on the general channel and people would be eager to go. So I turned on the group finder thing, and... nothing. I saw people running in and out of the mission, so people were doing it, but at no point did I get any sort of invite or further query from the tool, or anything. It just changed to a 'glowy' icon and that was that. I went on to DK, the first time I'd had to do so by shuttle, and ran a few missions, and after an hour or two, still no call to do Black Talon. What gives? Pinging people about it over the general channel seems rude, since there's a tool for finding groups now, but if the thing doesn't work, then I guess I don't need to be shy about it. This is the first Flashpoint for new players, so it seems like this one should be the easiest to get going with. It used to be. Am I just using the tool wrong?

I feel like I must be missing something. I've played a JK and a SI, and both have plenty of abilities to interrupt enemy abilities. It seems like the merc has a couple that will work on mooks (the explosive dart, the basic missile), but it seems like there's nothing that will interrupt a silver or higher other than the electro dart. Is that right, or is there some other ability I haven't noticed? It seems like this is the only class without an out-and-out interrupt ability.

A great Jedi once said, "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

Maybe because the ammunition is so bulky, and probably expensive? If you can easily get recharges for your blaster, but slug-throwers require you to carry around bulky explosive chunks of metal, there would have to be a huge advantage to justify that inconvenience, and it doesn't seem like there is.

Possibly, depending on how you mean 'beat'. Return of the Jedi is quite possibly the most brilliant work by John Williams, especially the scene you're talking about. If you go back to the scene, and don't just watch it, but listen to the music, the answers are all there. Each element in that scene has a theme, and you can tell who is winning by the music played. As Luke is fighting Vader, Vader's music surges and Luke's fades. When Luke finally gives in and launches out of hiding, the part where he 'beats' Vader, the bold, triumphant music that surges isn't Luke's theme at all - it's the Emperor's. If you listen to the musical cues, Luke is doing terribly in that whole encounter until he throws his saber away. Once he does that, the whole scene changes, and when Vader turns, it is Luke's music that surges. That's when he wins. Using his lightsaber only earned victory for the Emperor; the weapon he needed, and won the battle with, was compassion.

The droids were marshaled by accountants, and the clones by religious leaders, but the clones had the benefit of human intellect to figure out that they were terrible bosses and not be upset to lose them. Not much changed, in the end, but the sense that the clones would have all rebelled against their proper chain of command in order to support the religious nutjobs who had been incompetently middle-managing them in the trenches is affording the Jedi far more personal charisma than I think most ever demonstrated.

I don't think the clones had to be 'tricked' at all. The Jedi are terrible leaders. Since they're usually the focus of the story, it's easy to identify with them, but if you take a step back, you can see why the clones wouldn't be thrilled with them anyway. It's a modern military, yet the Jedi have them doing cavalry charges and running en masse at enemy emplacements. The Jedi go too... but the Jedi are nigh-invulnerable, able to sweet blaster fire aside and dodge with uncanny foresight. The clones they lead just get shot. In AotC, Mace Windu gets a squad of specially trained commandos. What does he do with them? Do they sneak around, and catch the enemy where they're not looking? Nope; he leads these stealthy demolition experts on a madcap charge to the front lines. The Jedi are endlessly confident and endlessly reckless. Yoda himself says as much. They answer not to the people of the Republic or any other authority, but instead to a mystical power beyond non-Jedi comprehension. Why should they get to throw people's lives away just because they can make rocks float in the air? Why should they be given command of armies when they have no experience or training in leading them?

A better automotive analogy would be that you're renting that beater, and want to change the radio station, but the rental company demands you only change the radio station after pulling to a complete stop, rolling down all the windows, walking around the car five times and chanting their slogan. You'd say, "What's the point in that? Why can't I just turn the knob?" and their response would be, "Because then everyone who rented the car would be turning the knobs all the time, and that would eventually wear out the radio." And then, despite enjoying the beater otherwise, you'd go rent a car from someone saner.

You've already paid for all that 'optimal' gear though, so the only difference is the appearance.

Echani and Teras Kasi could be alternate career branches of the class, but I'm not sure what you'd call the class.

I second that. If it's a game-breaking problem, then it should be fixed immediately, and if it's not, then a week of mild irritation with some small aspect of the game is no big deal. Being in the other hemisphere means that the game is basically unplayable most Tuesdays already, but adding a second unplayable day seems unfair. We are paying subscribers of the game, and only being able to play in the morning or middle of the night is not what we want to pay for.

I'd have to go with the Imperial Agent or Bounty Hunter on this one. Sure in a stand-up fight, they'd have trouble against all that space-magic, but they're more likely to have already poisoned their opponent before it gets that far, and as neither the Jedi nor the Sith are Reverend Mothers of the Bene Gesserit, that would be the end of it. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon almost bought it that way in Phantom Menace - I doubt even Jedi can hold their breath indefinitely, and had the droids not opened the doors to check, they would have died. A contact poison would have resolved the issue as well, or simply venting the atmosphere from that room. Magic powers only get you so far.

I guess their storyline would involve hanging around their faction fleet HQ while they floated through the featureless depths of intergalactic space, waiting thousands of years to reach the rest of the game. You can play that now, actually - just log in to the server selection screen and take a nap.

Hit 'p' to bring up the abilities window (or select it from the top of the screen). Then find the abilities that were in that slot and drag them from the abilities window onto your quickslot bar. If you accidentally drag stuff off the bar a lot, you can hit the lock icon next to the bar to lock it down and prevent that from happening.

Boy, he really hammered me the first attempt. It wasn't even a close fight. The second time around, I followed the advice here and stepped back to let the commandos blast at him first, then I pushed him back (to spare Doc) and jumped around taking out the mooks. I hadn't even finished the regular mooks, by the time the commandos had already taken down the silvers, picked off some of the regular mooks, and had the Executor down to 1/3 of his health. I still had plenty of time to go deal with the bombs afterwards. So yeah, don't bring a glowstick to a gun fight.

So I finally have a character at level 50! Post leveling, to keep up with content, characters have to be advanced by gear. Starting with Tionese gear, there are 'sets' of gear that come with bonuses when the whole set is worn. I vaguely remember some discussion about this, since there were complaints that, as a result, everyone past a certain level looked the same. As I recall, they changed it so that you could move the mods into a new piece of equipment... but I'm not sure if the set bonus goes with those mods. Could someone please explain the post 50 gear to me?

It does seem a strange omission. Even with the icon, you don't really get a good look at the thing until you equip it. Then again, you can't zoom in on the preview window either, so maybe it's all part of the plan.

I want to like Xalek, I really do, but he seems to die twice as fast as Khem. As a DPS Sorcerer, I need a tank, and Xalek seems to do more damage than Khem did, but he really takes a beating, and so far every gold-star opponent I've faced has killed him, whereas at least Khem would last out most fights. I've tried equipping him with all the best gear I can find, and still no luck. Is there some trick to Xalek's tanking that I'm missing?

What does the stat 'expertise' do? Is it just for PVP? What does it modify?

I had some trouble with that one a few nights ago. I wasn't near the fire, and my health showed as full, but then suddenly I caught fire and died in one burst of damage. I read the log, and it was less damage than I had hit points, so I'm not sure how it killed me, or why I took fire damage when the people I was standing next to did not.

This hat used to work with Twi'leks, but now it just disappears. It had a piece on the back of it that the lekku went through, but it didn't look unnatural, it just looked like there was a hole cut in the back. It was decidedly less odd looking than the 'slave gear' hat on Nar Shadaa, which clips through the lekku all the time. Could you reactivate this one for Twi'leks?