I find my trooper companion ugly and bland and rather enjoyed when I got a helmet to cover up his face, but nonetheless I see no harm in this.

"Constructive" criticism: how hard is it for Bioware to re-code for offering 640 resolution? For people with low-end systems, you're talking about maybe a 25-50% increase in performance. You know what games offer 640? Modern Warfare 3, Skyrim, Mass Effect 2. I run them all on my laptop, really well. This game runs horribly on my laptop, maybe 25 frames a second at best, usually worse. PvP is unplayable, flashpoints can get unplayably choppy. Everything is on low. I have no doubt the framerate would be MUCH better in 640 resolution. I'm surprised nobody brings this up, since I cheer when I see 640 under settings (Modern Warfare 3, playable at 640) and sigh when it's not offered (Black Ops, unplayable in multiplayer at 800x600.)

I WANTED to like the robot so much. He is so cool. But even with me as a healer, Aric seems like the better companion. I geared the robot some, but something wasn't right. Aric has mad gunner skills. I am healer spec--he is DPS, but also wears heavy armor. When it comes down to it I can throw him heals and count on him to inflict a lot of damage in the attrition battle.

The whole area was really rife with bugs for me, but somehow I managed to squeak through unscathed.

My server is really bad--15 on Alderaan on Saturday afternoon, sometimes 25 on the fleet. They should merge some servers, and more heavily "shard" the player heavy early-planets, if necessary. I played an imperial character on a more highly populated server and you had 130 on the fleet in primetime.

There's been numerous threads about this--this message initially confused me. I was stuck on a VERY HARD story boss, went to a new planet and got the message--which suggested to me that I HAD to beat the boss before I could do anything on the new planet. So I died--until I quit that character and rolled an alt. They should change this message to "your questlog is full, complete or abandon old missions." This game is complicated and large, and this message has already confused thousands of people who don't notice the 25 quest limit.

No they should merge servers fast. Republic side on a middling server is 1/4 capacity it should be, 1/10 the capacity it could be. I switched from a heavier to lighter server for an alt for no reason--it's dead, GTN is dead, heroics are dead, the slow-leveling casual players find the heroics too hard, so there are no heroics whatsoever, there's no MMO in the RPG. They were hoping for 2.5X the initial sales, didn't happen. Merge fast to improve the experience of playing the game. I want to do heroics. They're phenomenally fun when everything clicks. When I can't play them I'm not motivated to play. You can find groups on planets with 80 people, not 15. Reminds me of horrible web start-up companies I worked at where everybody was more concerned with the Powerpoint presentation to the board than actually making the company successful. They're all out of business.

<so speed up the animation, problem solved.> <man, Bioware should be paying you thousands of dollars to handle their bugs. you seem to know exactly whats needed to fix a multi billion dollar game's bugs> Anyone who's worked in a corporation knows there's problem-solving that booze-smelling railroad track vagrants could profitably be brought in on for consulting. Ego and lack of communication often generates "emperor has no clothes" situations. They have a serious problem with ability delay and responsiveness nobody took seriously enough (my imperial agent can take 6 or 7 full seconds to go into cover.)

<maybe it adds to the immersion of the game?> All the spaceports and orbital stations look exactly the same--if anything it breaks immersion, since you're constantly reminded how cookie-cutter Bioware had to go to make a game this massive viable. I leveled to 50 and traveled to Ilum, wasn't exactly stoked to see the same orbital station layout greeting me ("Yeah! fresh, new content!") "Mood" and "immersion" bits are way better-done in Mass Effect, in much smaller areas. Usually there's a cool poster, NPC, graffiti, lighting effect, dancing girls, animation, awe-inspiring vista in the distance--how does this apply to orbital stations, where there's nothing to see, and they're not even differentiated from one another, in the context of a game that's already unimaginably massive and time-wasting?

Your guild must be pretty elite. By "elite" I mean morons and they also don't like you, just to be confusing.

With a healer spec, hitting Khem with static barrier (renewing it when it expires too) and various healin' magic works on almost every boss or difficult encounter. Sometimes it becomes an attrition war--but one that you usually manage. I one-shotted the end boss twice in a row. Lategame my critical dark infusions were hitting for 4,600 health. If you save the 'auto-crit" "reckless" power for critical heals, that's almost 10,000 replenished health with 2 dark infusions (and quick dark infusion, too, if you take the perk+"resurgence" beforehand.) I used Xalek to tank lategame and that works too (with him being more vulnerable, using less taunts and inflicting more damage.) I have yet to see a healer complain about not being about to beat bosses. We become attached to our Khem. Khem: pure tank. Xalek: tanky/DPS variant.

<Why on earth would i want anything but a sorc healing my tank? They can give me the best possible buff (resistance bonus) and they have their magic bubble of inmunity that doesn't take aggro from the tank.> Yes! Sorc is the best healer. Static Barrier borders on practically UNLIMITED POWER. One of the more satisfying group play missions I had some poor tank warning us all of imminent peril because of an earlier failed group run, but my static barriers and heals made everything feel easy. "Those people sucked," my tank concluded.

Bioware messed up the companion dialogue system. It's a disaster. My Sith Inquisitor is done--I leveled him, and my crew remained mute nothings the entire game, except Khem. I'd change it immediately (i.e., affection affects crewskills, ALL dialogues, even "convert to the darkside" and "romance" dialogues, open up at appropriate levels.) It makes the class content (which they put an insane amount of work into) compare very poorly to other (shorter) Bioware games, for the *majority* of players, I'd bet. Most players are missing most dialogues with most companions, *even when they deliberately attempt to unlock them.* My companions behaved like mute nothings the entire game. It made the game feel emptier and crappier.

I thought it was fairly solid for what it was. The storylines are so diffused over time and given in small bursts of unique class content, it's hard to say. Me and my enemy having a philosophical debate at the end...errr...did we have philosophical differences? Does my character stand for anything? Say, could I ask my character about his time in slavery, how his hatred built up over the years? Could I interrogate him? That might have helped shed some light on this Darth Nox. The end of act 1 is the only twisty, wicked, cool part of the story that reminded me of the story-depth of KOTOR 1 and 2, sadly. Making my character a blank RPG slate of sorts doesn't necessarily suit this kind of tale. Having companions default to not unlocking conversations and quests unless you give them gifts is an awful design decision--I missed most every dialogue except for a few of Khem's, this really diminished my attachment to my companions (especially since I assume they flesh out some aspects of your story in the unique class content.) Overall I thought it was good, though, as a class story, independent of other issues with the game.

Planned CCing is essential unless you're substantially overleveled. You will die even if the healer heals constantly. They scaled difficulty up pretty high (bafflingly, arguably) on certain heroic encounters.

Maybe up to the boss. You'll die on the boss for sure. The boss is quite an attrition battle--can easily kill four overleveled people w/Tank and healer all doing exactly what they're supposed to do. I had one group where it felt easy (we might have had some substantially overlevelled people, which helps), another group where it felt borderline impossible and we disbanded.

This fight is repugnant. My group didn't execute despite everyone checking out advice and videos on the Internet (I'm still not sure why you have to stand in the corners), healing wasn't possible with the sudden damage infliction, we wiped 10 times without ever making a solid dent on his health, and quit (despite everybody trying to interrupt, avoid the AoE, hit the panels, stand in the right spot, blow up the droids, heal and tank, which is the "strategy"--though "stand in the corners of the room for some reason" doesn't qualify much as a strategy to me, just a way to slaughter innocent players a few times.) When the numbers come back on how many often-overleveled groups disbanded from group content out of frustration, somebody might get fired. That's just speculation. The l33t hardcore players on this board claiming things are "too easy" do not remotely resemble any human being I have grouped with in the game. I have fun with the challenging stuff that requires coordination, but numerous groups I've been in have given up on heroic areas, and that's not counting the people who simply avoid playing them entirely because they seem too hard or frustrating (even if the mobs are easy, some boss will kill you a dozen times and feel impossible.)

I'm surprised there aren't more tanks and healers. It's a completely viable way to play the SP game. When some boss was threatening my inquisitor, companion-heals mode was a pretty satisfying way of ending them.

The Sith are pretty mustache-twirly, and there's not a lot of interesting reflection on the nature of "the force" (like in KOTOR 2, where your "nihilistic" enemy was REALLY scary--like a vortex of absolute vacuity.) I seem to be complaining, but I kind of miss the "first season of Battlestar Gallactica" excellence-in-writing of the original games. Just saying they took Star Wars to a new level the prequels never did. Must be hard with the MMO format, but I would have liked to have seen my Sith Inquisitor display complex motivations or philosophical perspective. Strange thing to demand from a game, but is the dark side nihilism? You tap into the primal nature of the universe and recognize the emptiness of human affairs, and lust for power?

1)Companion dialogues and missions are locked up in the "affection" system, I defaulted to not buying gifts for my companions. Most people I've talked to missed most companion dialogues. I missed a lot of the unique content, which distinguishes a class and makes you want to re-roll as different classes, to see their unique content, and subscribe. My companions are mostly nobodies to me. Just let all companion dialogues unlock as you level and let the affection only affect crew skills. I'm serious, put it in a patch--if I re-roll a character, I want to talk to my companions and feel like I have a crew. The "gift" system is a carwreck, but you could just let it affect crewskills and it'd be fine the way it stands in the game. 2)Heroics are too hard. A level 43 heroic boss murdered 3 level 46's and a level 50 so bad we dissolved the group and quit, despite everybody ostensibly trying to do what they were supposed to do. Scale back difficulty on half the heroics (they could be colored like the items), so a good proportion are casual fun, while some are "hard." 3)New flashpoints you do should all have stories with Bioware moral choices, or at least something interesting. Black Talon is the only multiplayer content in the game with robust Bioware dialogues, and I have no idea why. ADD people can spacebar through. This was a major lost opportunity, since "Black Talon" with a group the first time is phenomally fun. Devs clearly believed "phenomenal" fun was best copied from WoW, superstitiously (despite 7 huge MMOs trying that and failing, METAGAMEDEVFAIL.)

<Yes there are multiple conversations with your companions that unlock and even some little side quests. The gifting cooldown is like 30 secs so you can't back to back give but you can save up a bunch then distribute them all at once. Upping their affection also increases the success they have in the crew skills (I think that is what it affects), so to me it is more than worth getting their affection's up.> I'm more complaining about it from a game design perspective, not cost/benefit. Bioware should be hurling unique class content at you to encourage re-rolling alt characters, not locking up unique class content in a chastity belt. As a player blundering through my long, long story, I really missed the Bioware "Mass Effect" companions while not really comprehending I was supposed to be playing some stupid game that makes no narrative sense to unlock their conversations and content ("it's Khem's birthday! Who's a big monster now!!!") Forget crew skills, once you hit level 30, level 30 conversations should open up with every companion. My class story just felt emptier and crappier without regular companion dialogues. Maybe I'll go try to buy some gifts now, though, but apparently people in this thread can't even figure out how to game Ashara's affection. Sounds pretty unfun to me.

They basically MMOed-up the worst aspects of the frustrating "influence" system from KOTOR 2, which locked you out of conversations you wanted to hear because of arbitrary nonsense. But in KOTOR 2 you could at least explore your companions up to a point--TOR locks you out of their characterization *entirely* if you don't play an idiotic stat-boosting game. I'm level 43 Sith Sorcerer, 2 planets to go, and barely interacted with my companions (did two missions for Khem, "welcome" convos for others, that's about it.) I was intrigued by the Jedi lady and the nerd, but never bought them gifts since it's just a vapid chore I didn't care about. There's so much else to consider, boosting companion affection wasn't big on my priorities. I guess I was supposed to buy gifts for everybody to unlock conversations? And there's a gifting cooldown so you can't just make a one-stop trip and max affection? Ugh. Basically my companions aren't real characters to me, and I have no attachment to them whatsoever--since I didn't play the gift game throughout the game.

I don't know how many unique convos/missions the companions have, but I haven't been buying gifts for any of them, and now I assume I'd outlevel any missions they give me. I did a couple for Khem since he's always with me and I'm evil enough to build dialogue friend-points. I'd kind of like to see what the companions have to offer but if you didn't play the game exactly how they intended (I guess constantly buying gifts for companions throughout the game and doing their missions at the exact right level?) you miss out on whatever the companions offered your unique class story. Couldn't Bioware just have the companions organically talk to you as the game goes on like Mass Effect? I guess if I do another class I'll buy incredibly lame "gifts" for my companions constantly to unlock their conversations and missions, but I'm kind of annoyed I was even supposed to. Just let me talk to my companions on the ship. I have no idea who Ashara and the pirate and the nerdy healer are, and this is all unique Sith Inquisitor content Bioware should be throwing at me to encourage people to play and enjoy alt characters with their own unique content.

At least half the heroics are far too difficult. I'm not sure where the people on these forums come from (middle school boasting lunchrooms?) but numerous groups I've assembled have disbanded in utter frustration, while at least attempting to use appropriate tactics. I've probably completed most of them, but that doesn't change the fact they're so frustrating as to alienate the majority of casual players (people literally aren't doing flashpoints and heroics because the difficulty is auto-jacked up to "hard," sometimes "very hard," by default.) "Fall of the Locust" on Taris was impossible with three players who out-leveled the content by 4 levels. We only had one class with a CC, and the mobs weren't possible without 2-3 coordinated CCs. Good night and good luck. They're all doable but they require the exact right/competent group, and then they can still be frustrating--it's certainly typical to see players only approach heroics when they out-level them by 3 levels (a sure sign they're badly designed.) Very few of the group sections are casual fun with some challenge requiring coordination (like the single-player content). Somebody at Bioware is going to get fired for this, hope they're not reading this post, but you might want to talk to your boss about nerfing right now before they get the number of disbanded, frustrated groups back.

Nice to see they're putting story into the new flashpoints. I thought that was a major "huh?" decision on Bioware's part.