My personal opinion is that the effectiveness of a non-force user against a jedi or sith kind of depends on the era we are talking about. In the Old Republic style era, I think it makes sense that techniques and specific training in dealing with force users would be kind of normal for anyone who might possibly have to cross them (bounty hunters, agents, mercs, etc.). It would still be an uphill battle, but sort of like an infantry that specializes in fighting against the superior cavalry out of necessity. Now in the more traditional New Republic era, where jedi are fairly common but sith are basically unheard of, these kinds of techniques wouldn't really be standard training and possibly lost to the ages due to never being needed enough to be improved upon. So while certain examples of elite mercs or soldiers or something (such as Fett Sr.) might exist with the natural skill or training or experience in dealing with force users, it would be considered fairly useless for the vast majority.

Normally, Bioware isn't hurting for VO budgets either.

Stuff like chat bubbles and holster bugs are the kinds of things that are effectively never going to get fixed because they don't offer an immediate RoI. It's F2P, which means all design issues need to actually result in money. That's why something like 95% of the game development goes into things that can be bundled into cartel boxes, and the "expansion" content is so stripped down (Return to Bioware storytelling, lol). As for performance issues holding them back -- that's a bunch of crap. Otherwise scrolling combat text would be killing frame rates.

I'm no fan of the Hero Engine, but I don't think this game's fate can be blamed by it. Bioware messed up by assuming MMO fans wanted a set-piece game where each location is meant to feel like a 'moment in time' rather than a persistent world. That drove off the hard-core Star Wars fans who's very desire for an MMO stems from wanting to exist in the Star Wars universe (rather than just play through a story). It didn't help that those same fans came in knowing that ToR is the reason Galaxies had to die (a game that *did* give them the fantasy of being in the universe, no matter how outdated). The other group they pissed off was the Raiding Guild folks who were hoping for a more standard MMO experience with a good sci-fi setting that was published by a solid studio. I mean, on paper, you can't really screw a Star Wars MMO up. Except they did. Bioware was apparently caught off guard by how quickly the playerbase reached the end-game, and since they were too busy finally getting around to addressing problems that were ignored during beta, they really weren't in a great position to focus on the end-game content. Basically, Bioware really screwed up on nearly every level of game design. Hero Engine was a fairly minor part of that, all other things considered.

I'm not so sure. People aren't subscribing to MMO's because companies keep making bad ones (or none at all). What happened is every publisher saw WoW, and decided that less than a million+ subscribers simply wasn't a success. So they jumped on the F2P bandwagon and the rest of the genre took a real hit to the reputation as a result. Because anytime you have to prioritize every dev decision based on the immediate ROE, you'll kill what is supposed to make MMO's special: long term investment. Even WoW started going down once they started trying to redefine the genre, around the time of Cataclysm. Funny thing about WoW, though, is the playerbase is straight up not happy with it, but there's zero alternative for a well-supported subscription MMO. Anyway, I think the MMO model took a dive around the time publishers became obsessed with F2P, but I don't think the concept of traditional MMO's is anywhere near dead. Publishers are just too enamored with the easy money that comes with F2P, and the market quality suffers as a whole. But since there aren't many alternatives, it makes it look like people are just not into MMO's anymore.

That's a disappointment. Is it safe to assume you guys are basically treating 4.0+ like a reboot, where the intention is the classic game is pretty much just as-is simply because there's no good way to gut it out?

Kind of. The planetary level caps are about 2 levels higher than the max level quests on that planet. Going into a planet like Taris (republic), at the level cap means you're first 1/2 of questing is still going to be against grey level enemies. Add in the fact that your companion can essentially solo everything anyway, and overall difficulty is still way too low. I don't know about the OP, but I'd personally love for a way to play through the original game with the original level of difficulty. Healing up after a few fights, using stims to get through tough class quests, etc..

People have complained about Heroic 4's since release. Mainly because past the first few planets, and aside from whatever the end-game heroic 4's were, there were rarely enough people questing around you to actually get a group for them. So most people just ended up skipping them entirely, or coming back after they outleveled them enough. It's not about "EZ god mode" or not wanting to work hard. The difficulty of those things was never about the quests themselves; only about getting 3 other people to help you with them.

It's not a "tribute" but a cost-saving measure, plain and simple.

Yeah the whole streaming client thing is just horrible, and has been for years. Get the 'normal' download and you won't have these issues.

You have an entry-level i7, and a GPU that's not meant for games.

Use of modern hardware, RAM particularly. It's only been something like 10 years since 64-bit has been 'mainstream' enough for software to start converting.

I know it's what everyone says to do, but you don't need to zone out or relog or anything. Just Control+U twice in a row.

Not a suggestion, but I'm curious. If you could have two companions out, regardless of class, who would you choose? I'd take M1-4x and Sgt. Rusk because that's a lot of patriotism...

As far as I can tell, either a companion agrees or disagrees with your choice. In either case, your influence with them increases by the same amount. The only times I ESC out now are when the dialogue doesn't match up with the wording I chose. Stuff like "Focus on the Objective" becoming "What kind of idiot runs around helping the homeless?!".

There are a lot of options like this out there. Just understand that these kinds of laptops get very hot, and typically have poor keyboards and trackpads.

Either intentionally or otherwise, it's looking like the level requirements were changed for some of them. On Republic side, I could do the Taris bonus series, but the Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine, and Alderan quests wouldn't show up. When I got to Balmora, that bonus series *did* work just fine. I then headed back to Nar Shaddaa (as a level 50-something), and noticed the woman who starts that bonus series had a grey quest icon over her head, like when you have a quest that's going to be available but you aren't quite high enough in level. I'm suspecting that it will open up at 60. I haven't checked on the other planets yet, but will do so when I get a chance.

You can vendor your gear. I think the OP is trying to do the same thing. Anyway, vehicles aren't objects in this game; they are skills. When you use a new vehicle, you're learning a new skill under the Vehicle section of your ability page. Same with pets.

You're partially right. Voice acting was never an 'unknown' or 'unexpected' cost, which is different than not being a major cost. This argument used to come up when talking about how expensive the game was to make, and people started saying the project costs were out of control because of the voice acting. Bioware (I don't remember which dev) clarified that in an interview, stating that voice overs were a *known* costs. They've been a regular part of Bioware games for a long time, and they weren't really blindsided by anything related to them. On a side note, the costs that *did* balloon out of control were apparently related to the Hero Engine. The idea that the cost of voice actors has contributed to the design changes isn't really that crazy. Yes, VO's are generally hired under contract to provide future recordings, but those terms aren't indefinite and it's not like it means Bioware can just call them up on a whim and demand another 30 hours of recording sessions. They probably still have to pay the VO's for future work (the contracts probably stipulate the VO is to be available, not that Bioware is paying them up front for all future VO work). Plus, with the way the VO industry has been complaining about pay for years now, to the point that strikes are on the table, it's silly to assume the VO costs are some trivial thing that have no bearing on the game development.

I miss them. It was mainly more obvious that something I said affected them. I suspect Bioware wanted to discourage people from escaping out and selecting options based on affection gain, but they already did that with the influence changes. I'd just like the more noticeable icons back.

Which is why there's probably more to the story than the OP knows or is mentioning.

I might give it a try. I knew about that location, but was kind of concerned about accidentally starting the expansion or something, so never really bothered. I honestly didn't expect to cap out on my crystals quite as soon as I have, though.

All of which can be taken over with a little social engineering.

You can get proper sith eyes as soon as I get a decent beard option.

They had a chance to address this during the summer before F2P, but failed to do so. They should have made character names non-unique, and left legacy names as unique. Instead, they just made legacy names non-unique and once servers started merging, good names became more rare.