Highsis I am 99% sure your playing the class wrong. I can see that you have a passion for Marauders but your not doing something right if your getting owned in pvp as one let alone four different ones. I played a Sentinel during the beta and I am leveling a Marauder now and when playing them its best to remeber they don't play the same as most of the other classes. Marauders don't have a rotation to follow, they react based on what cool downs and abilities are currently up and prioritize which one to hit first. The better you are at knowing what to hit when, the more dps you do in the fight. Which is why good Marauders are so damn good and bad Marauders are such garbage. TL;DR The class is not broken but you way of playing it sucks. You are doing something wrong at the most basic level.

Dr. Lokin reverts back to human form anytime an Operative stealths so its not like he could actualy hold onto the damn item.

I would recomend on of the following Sorcerer - Synthweave, Archaeoloy and Underworld Trading Operative - Cybertech, Scavenging and Slicing Power Tech - Biochem, Bioanalysis and Diplomacy Sythweave can make modable armor for all 3 armor types, which Cybertech can keep leveled up with new mods and armorings. Cybertech also lets you make ear pieces for all your guys. Biochem will let you make tons of useful consumables to use as well as implants The only items you will need to buy from vendors or players are enhancements, gun barrels, lightsaber hilts and offhand weapons/shields/focus. Another setup would be Sorcerer - Artifice, Archaeology, Treasure hunting Operative - Cybertech, Scavenging, Underworld Trading Power Tech - Armstech, Scavenging, Investigation This would let you make all possible modable upgrades of any color, but you would not have easy access to implants or consumables. In the long run however this would likely be your best choice.

First off as a Shadow you should NEVER EVER be using Strength because it makes you super weak. Your melee damage is boosted by strength as any class but as a Shadow Willpower boosts your melee damage, force damage, melee critical, force critical and power for both as well. You want willpower for everything or you are just worthless using 3/4 of your skills.

Yeah there was a few times where I ended up getting 5/5 datacrons on the planet but my firend only got 3/5 because of the punishing datacron jump-a-thon.

Companions will not accept affections gifts or give almost no points for them unless your in a relationship with the companion already. Some companions actually gain affection if you flirt with others.

Instead of paying people buy yourself and Quinn gear on the GTN. Sometimes you might want to spend commendations on your companion first if their gear gets too bad to keep up with you.

Check the levels of quests and always do the lower level ones first.

Well from my own experiences and from reading everyone elses I can definately say "Random drops are Random" but SOMETHING causes leanings in the drops. Running the same instance over again with the exact same group a few times tends to end with the same drops over and over. Running a flash point by myself solo over and over showed the same thing. The only way to break the cycle seemed to join someone elses group or reform with a new leader. At one point I ran Black Talon 6 times solo and ended up with 5 marauder tunics and 1 bounty hunter tunic, 6 Juggernaughts gloves, 6 Juggernaughts boots, 4 willpower lightsabers and 2 strength lightsabers. That is random when compared to overall results but when compared to my OWN results it shows a horrible pattern.

This was done as soon as the boss was up and there was 8 people to kill it, unless you did it on the first or second day of EGA or a fresh server then your very likely not first. The world bosses spawn again after 90 minutes or so and every time a fresh instance opens up the world boss is up on there too. It is also not much of an accomplishment truth be told to kill a world boss because its basically a heroic quest for 8+ people of the beasts level. Your placing a level of importance and difficulty on them that is undeserved. Most people would get annoyed if they kept getting server announcments about kills on world bosses too. Why would anyone want to see spam messages saying "Randomguild6 has killed DerpyWorldBoss4" all day long? Most people don't care about what your doing, and the ones that do know where to find you.

A few builds before the end of beta they messed around with craft skills. The result was a streamlining of the crafting skills but it also caused missing recipes in several crew skills but some VERY NASTY ones in Artifice and Synthweave. Artifice lost most of its willpower shields at lower levels and Synthweave Light armor is missing a ton of recipes compared to medium and heavy armor when they should be equal. I was sad to see they are still missing in early access.

You can't be ganked until after Nar shadaa. Which is the 4th planet and you will be level 25+ by then. Your post is irrelevant

There are no pvp brackets. You all get boosted to level 50 stats. Unless your gear is well below your level you should still be competitive.

It's a bug I had hoped they would have fixed by now.

First things first I almost always play on a PvP server and am all for PvP except when it drives people away from the game. Many of your suggestions will do just that as beta testing helped show, because trust me you don't want this no matter how much you say you do because you don't know what your asking for. They added a lot of those restrictions after they merged two testing groups of the closed beta testers and gave them one PvP server to test on. Many bad things happened during that build, people got banned from beta it got so bad. For example Nar shadaa used to be all open for PvP because the Republic and Empire quest areas all connected. After that build they closed it all off so only the "Bonus Series" is connected now and added all the stuff your asking them to remove to fix all the problems that occured from people being able to run rampant. Many of the things you don't like are there to prevent exploits that got exposed in beta from occurring. When you reach Tattooine you will see a lot more open world pvp, and when you reach Hoth you will finally understand why they made those changes to the earlier worlds. Keep in mind this is a CASUAL game, and you level as such and the rules are set up for that way of play.

Slicing is VERY useful for cybertech. It's the only way to learn Space Ship part recipes so you can make space ship upgrades and it also tends to get you some very nice recipes for other craft skills. I didn't take UT when I had Slicing and just used the extra money I made with it to buy the UT materials I needed. It worked great.

Because its not true? Everyone gets their CC break early and its a matter of skill to know what CC to break and what CC to wait out. People who hit buttons just because they can or because they are hoping to use a powerful ability twice in a fight WILL lose badly. I usually use my worst CC first on people like that, then wait for them to immediately break it and use a better CC to lock them down again. It's worth noting that the more CC you get hit with and suffer through the faster it wears off unless they manage to break that system again, because it did have issues during beta one some builds. I usually pvp'd with characters in their 20's so fighting people level 50 was normal for me. Sure a lot of them had epic gear and ran me right over but those people earned that right, and they will kill you 10x faster in the open world without bolster. However I never once felt my character was not competitive in those fights because I was still able to kill them if I was able to make them fight on my terms.

You will hit some hard walls keeping it up to date unless you spend a good amount of money sending companions on missions. Theres a few times where you will both need a ton of 1 material to skill up that only drops on 1 or 2 planets.

Ummm your first choice of Synthweaving, Archaeology and Underworld is a good idea, but don't take Artifice if your taking Synthweave. You don't want to be competing for gathering materials because you won't find enough to level both of your crew skills and gear yourselves. During beta my friend played Sage and used Artifice, Archaeology and Underworld while my Sentinel used Cybertech, Scavenging and Slicing. Cybertech will let you make armor mods, mod mods, droid parts and ear pieces for your characters and companions. Cybertech uses Underworld trading to make its blues and purples so I used Slicing to look for recipes and help supplement our income. It worked out REALLY well

So did you get owned by lower level people or did a high level person beat you down? Because all I'm seeing is "I got beat up change it".

I played for about 7 months, and leveled several characters between levels 30-47 so I think thats pretty accurate based on personal experience. Tried testing it with same gear at different levels, even right after I leveled and made note of the changes to stats and damage caused.

This is what people don't get. A higher level gives you more options but skill wins the day.

Trust me they won't die, and I find this really funny actually because it is so wrong. There where plenty of people thinking like that in the beta but it wasn't true at all. I played plenty of games where the level 50's didn't top the list with most healing, damage or objective points and instead it was some level 20 something leading the pack. Once people learn how to play better they will start enjoying the fact that they can be level 22 and stomp down a level 35 in a warzone. You have not witnessed rage until you own a level 33 sorcerer 3 times in a row with a 22 Sentinel. I got told I must be cheating because he should win versus lower level melee and I laughed.

If you understand how the Bolster system works and how to make it work for you more its really good. If your clueless then your going to get rocked. Basically if your gear is close to your current level, your going to beat up people who are higher level but have weaker gear for their level. A level 15 in level 15 blues is going to be a lot tougher than a level 20 in level 15 blues despite having more talents and abilities because he has better gear for his current level. At end of beta I kept my guys maxed out wearing modded armor and weapons as close to my level as I could get ahold of. It made a huge difference in PvE but it made a bigger difference in PvP.

You can make whatever character you want wherever you want regardless of what other characters you have on that server.