Folks in general chat suggested a new character without legacy perks, weapons and crafted gear. Gave it a try and while still not difficult it is much much improved. Thanks for the replies to the thread.

Played the game at release and loved it but had to leave after some personal issues, came back as soon as I was able and was super excited to get back to the game I loved. Now, as a returning player who hasn't been back long I realize that much has changed, and I understand there are systems I don't understand yet so I figured I would ask here. I am genuinely concerned, is the game supposed to be this easy? I expected leveling to be "slightly" easier since I am subscribed, but not only am I not needing to do any side quests and still staying above the level for the planets but I am one or two shotting all enemies. I thought perhaps it might change as I leveled but, I am now approaching 30 and it shows no sign of taking more than one or two abilities to destroy a group of enemies. I guess I just want to know if it eventually gets better? This seems very dull at the moment. Is there a way to turn off the xp or increase the difficulty? Anything? Any advice would be appreciated, thank you.

Civil War would have to be my favorite, followed very, very closely by Huttball.

The only problem I truly have with damage meters, is that generally when you are in a group nobody cares about anything but top DPS, and won't hesitate to kick you if it is not up to their standards. And while normally I would have no problem with this, I mean hey if I want my own group that doesn't care about DPS nothings stopping me from making one, I do have one large irritant when it comes to damage meters.... The fact that people only look at the damage, period. Nobody cares that I stopped DPS'ing the boss for a minute to kill adds. CC. or save a healer from certain death because the tank failed to pick something up, they only care that for 1 minute I wasn't DPSing and thus was below their standards and /kick This leads to tunnel vision DPSers who only care about pumping out as much damage as possible on a boss ignoring everything else in the environment, breaking CC's with AOE's etc, which causes wipes and frustration. So while I understand people wanting DPS meters and personally use one in most MMORPG's to keep track of myself, I think overall they are generally a tool which actually lowers the game play standards of others when it allows you to measure and thus judge other peoples DPS. /end rant

Nevermind got it worked out, apparently my companion was bugged in some way and I had to send it on a sell grey items mission to come back, then suddenly everything worked fine. Thanks yall.

I am going to the correct hangar, however the door to the ship is sealed up. Also just tried to see if I could take the Korriban or Hutta shuttles just to see if leaving and coming back would change something, but the option to leave for those planets is Blacked out for me and un-selectable.

Sorry I should have made myself more clear, I am already level 20+ have my own ship and have been questing well beyond your first arrival at the Fleet. I am referring to the quest you get while out in the open world from a droid at one of the quest hubs. There is a shuttle next to him you can take to immediately go to the fleet, which I chose, and then completed the flashpoint and now just have no way of getting back to my questing hub.

So while questing I was given the chance to take a shuttle up to the Fleet Station in order to do a flashpoint, however the game doesn't seem to want to let me leave. After looking around I can find no shuttles leading back to the planet I came from and if I go to the Hangar there is a ship there, however I cannot enter it. Any help would be appreciated.