The thing is, OP is asking for a problem to be fixed when the solution is in his hands. If you don't like cutscenes, then join a guild that bypasses them. Failing that, he can make a list of fellow bypassers and friend them for groups. If there isn't enough people to make groups for both ways, then tough luck, I guess. Adding in more tools or excuses to boot someone rarely ends well.

There are, in fact, multiple ways Esseles can turn out. It's pretty fun, too, to see what happens when I group with a Dark side person and his choices win. I still get Light side points for choosing, but also get to see what happens if you choose dark side. I felt really bad for all those people he sent out the airlock with the reactor. They were screaming for their lives.

GOGOGO HURI I boot people not already at the instance ready to go in. And if they take longer than 2-3 seconds to roll on loot. And especially if they say anything in chat.

Completely false. IAs get a 60 second Flashbang, I get a 90 second Flashbang. IAs can use their version of a kick to the Jewels on the move, I have to stop moving. The only thing the mirror does is show a bizarro world where Republic players get slightly worse abilities.

Couple of things here, even though I also tend to agree that people should stop complaining so much. Mirror specs are not as close as you think. I'm a Scoundrel, and let's compare to Operative for a moment. Operative vs Scoundrel 60 Second cooldown vs 80 second cooldown It's also slightly amusing that all these differences go in the Empire's favor, that I've seen so far. 2. You're assuming that all levels PvP equally, in other words, that a level 22 has an equal chance to be in a PvP match as a level 50. I would disagree with that assumption, and posit that a level 50 would be much more likely to PvP since he is no longer leveling.

What made you think that people would be rerolling?

I would urge you to reconsider. Here's two reasons why below. 1) When talented, critical hit ticks replenish 1 Energy. 2) Gives you a button to push between large heals. At lower level content or 2+ Heroics you will be able to DPS most of the time, but later on, the damage caused to people gives you no Energy to waste on damage abilities and Flurry of Bolts - the equivalent ability for damage rotations - does nothing for damage. Mixing in and upgrading Diagnostic Scan means you can stay in 4 pip Energy regeneration for as long as possible. If you blow all your big heals in a small time period, you'll be energy-starved and have to use a CD. Scan is a great filler on its own but they tossed in negligible healing so you don't re-target an enemy instead.

So do Sages and Commandos, and Commandos are quite common. Sages are everywhere. Now, not all are Healing, but people still play then so it seems like Scoundrels should be the same.

I originally started the game as a Gunslinger, got to 23, and decided to make a male character - decided to make him a Scoundrel since I enjoy the story arc and scoundrels seemed to be, by and large, ignored by players. Doing a quick /who search at different points showed that Scoundrels numbered fewer than half of the amount of Gunslingers and Trooper ACs, and at times as little as 12.5% of the amount of Jedi. Yet I can do a lot of 2 Heroics as solo and equal level using a combination of great DPS, control, clutch healing, and stealth. Upper Hand is an interesting mechanic with many possible uses (saved old Corso from death many times with an emergency Kolto injection) and tactics. To sum it up: the Scoundrel is an excellent class. So why the apparent aversion to them?

Well, just did a quick action shot for Captain Kurin Kalashnikov doing what he does best...

Thought Lamalla Rann was still on Ord Mantell.

Guilds already do this, without a meter. It takes longer and requires more involvement than simply seeing if the X value is high enough, though. Raid leaders used to have class officers for just this purpose. But hey, we found a new way to do the same except we don't have to expend any effort to vet our players, we just use blanket criteria (like he doesn't exceed X dps or she doesn't have Y talent). I realize that meters are just a symptom, not a cause, of the GOGOGO instant gratification communities that MMOs have become. Players don't want to spend any amount of time creating a successful raid, and meters provide the means to class potential raid members without actually expending any time or effort. You just reduce all players to a single number, and pick the highest. I just don't look forward to it.

Think of this like Luke in New Hope making the trench run. Obi-wan tells him to trust the force, and he (AMG!!) switches off his targeting computer. He immediately hears a worried cry come through his headset asking if something is wrong. He trusts the Force instead. By the standards of the meter authoritarians, Luke is either a newb, afraid of having his performance criticized, or wants to freeload off his fellow starfighter pilots.

I agree with you, but you'd be surprised the amount of level 1-10s people will make for God-only-knows what purpose.

Hyperbole garbage. Not even worth responding to beyond a casual (pun intended) slap down of this fiction.

I wouldn't feel so strongly about it were that the case. It's often enough that I got tired of it. At first people generally left it go at "no thanks" but over time they got more zealous in their purge, until the point I had people raging at me because I was being a "a noob who likes to remain bad."

Yet you use a relative term "low" which can mean 3877 is "low" compared to 3880. See how this takes off? You personally may only try to reform people who are way off the mark, but there are legions of people wanting to "fix" your statistically-irrelevant difference. When you politely refuse, they do what you just did: get rid of them OMG so bad worse thing ever to have in my group.

I don't want to rebuff every skill inquisitor out there any more than I want to tell every Democrat "no" to switching parties. It becomes a tedious and tiresome routine of constantly having people trying to modify your behavior because they think X is the only way to go. Especially when they have no personal experience in grouping with me and assume I am a wayward soul that needs their divine touch.

So what you're saying is that people really want the real-time damage meter and will do whatever is necessary to get it, and all the talk of using a parse to improve one's play is bunk? The only reason to absolutely need information about other people's combat is if you wish to reform them. Otherwise, you'd ask for parses of your own combat and then make people who join your raid or guild use them as a condition of joining.

Because what good is being pro if you aren't spreading your benevolence around? Like I said - go into WoW with a slightly different build, and you'll have plenty of people hoping to save you from yourself.

No, but it does mean we don't give it away for free to every person we see. Give the parse, not the meter. Let everyone that wants to min/max do so through trial and error.

It doesn't do that. It works like alcohol - alcohol doesn't turn you into an ***, but it allows people who already are asses to act on it. People won't do much bragging until they have a meter to prove it.

It's not so much that people argue over tiny changes in DPS. It's not really the existence of the DPS meter. It's the generalizations that spring from them. People already in game ask "What's the best X?" and they'll copy whatever build does best damage under idealized conditions, to the letter. Then it becomes an inquisition to bring all the rest of the Gunslingers to X. X is just plain better, even if it is only 2% better assuming perfect inputs. Anyone who refuses to use X clearly is a bad who wants carried, or likes to suck, or has no clue how to play. It does happen quite a bit in WoW, and worse of all, it comes unbidden. Just join that game with a slightly different build and play a dungeon, I can promise you someone will try to reform you. Again, I hope the SW community is mature enough that this becomes an unfounded fear - this thread gives me some measure of hope. I doubt I would be getting the adult responses elsewhere that I've gotten here.

Perhaps so, but I've only played one game where damage meters were so widely used and they were a net negative. Other games surely have them, but never gained the same prevalence. Going on this one example and doubting much has changed in people since then, I could easily see the same thing occurring.

I know, and I've never disagreed that the tools were useless. They're not. I use similar tools at work all the time to test viability of certain systems. We're at an impasse, though. I think that the meters do more harm than good, as people can't use them responsibly. I can minimize my exposure to it by being around like-minded folks, which I do already, but I hope it doesn't become a dominating issue like it has in WoW. You feel they can, which isn't altogether unreasonable, by the way. We'll just have to wait and see. I hope I'm wrong.