I disagree. I think the entire idea of a repeatable event is flawed. Grouped content is fine, but once you've done it why be allowed to do it again? The world should have moved on. Flashpoints can still be unique through their particular form of group interaction. Plot points that all group members take part in, that has value. What is so special about making a repeatable quest? Flashpoints aren't the only example of repeatable quests. Space battles are the easy follow up, as are many of quests found at terminals.

When I play a quest, say Athiss for example, I can play that same quest again the next day. And the next day. And the next. A similar argument can be made for every one of the space battles. How many times can I blow that ship up? Didn't I blow it up yesterday? Quests that can be run over and over again are but one example of how quests don't matter in the game. Accomplishing a quest does nothing more than expose me to loot and gain levels... so that... I can.. um.... take more quests? There's nothing thematically at stake. The world doesn't change for having completed or failed at a quest. When someone begs me to help defend against a pending republic invasion if I ignore that person for months there should be consequences. The republic should, oh I don't know.. INVADE! Maybe even successfully. Without that, without consequences, everything I do in the game doesn't matter. There isn't even really a story. There may be characters that talk at me, but what they say is completely unimportant. All I need to know is where to go and what to click on when I get there until it is dead. Nothing changes if I do it well of if I do it poorly. Same thing goes for light side / dark side decisions. When I kill a politician there should be some repercussions. I should be wanted by the police. There should be a bounty on my head. I should be in danger when I visit his office again or deal with his friends. I should be revered by his enemies... and on and on. Instead I get 100 dark side points and move onto the next quest. This is a quick way to lose my involvement.

Moving my post here at the request of moderators. Adding some clarifications to the end as well: Howdy everybody. I am thinking about canceling my Star Wars account, and thought I should communicate why because I think I'm not the only person who was looking for something in this game that didn't find it. I'm curious about what others think. Before I begin I'd like to say that I understand what I'm about to describe, the game I hoped SW would be, is likely impossibly large / too grand to be implemented. This isn't a spoiled child saying "but I wanted a PONY" but rather my blue sky view of what something like this could be and a significant way to differentiate your game from WOW. None of what I'm about to say amounts to SW:TOR is broken because it doesn't do these things, TOR is very good at being what it wants to be... what I'm about to describe is a completely different game. What I wanted in SW:TOR was the ability to inhabit a world in which space wizards exist. I wanted to be dropped into the world as an individual and build my own story. There should be some over-arching world plotline that grows and advances... that encourages me to interact with others, but there is something subtly broken in allowing people to inhabit the same world where they all played through the same story. I was a bounty hunter. Every other person who was a bounty hunter was in the same Great hunt, going after the same target, with the same Mako as a partner. If we REALLY were inhabiting the same world that's impossible. There aren't a million Mako clones for each of us to have. This means that I wasn't inhabiting the same world as other bounty hunters. It means I was inhabiting my own universe, and they were running through their own parallel one. We'd team up only when we needed bodies to throw at a particular mission. This 'Breaking the story' thing happens when there are missions that can be run multiple times. How many times can I attack the same satellite? Why is it still there? Didn't I blow it up yesterday? There aren't any stakes in these missions. There can't be. When I complete them they're still there to be done again tomorrow. Nothing has changed by my success or failure at the mission. It's about Global Continuity. Without this I argue that you've removed the RPG element completely. "You just don't like MMORPGs" I hear you saying. Not so. I don't like this particular implementation of them. The implementation that sacrifices the RPG element completely. There's nothing in the words "Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game" that says that you have to have grind quests, that everybody has to have access to the same quests, that you have to dungeon crawl the same dungeons, clicking on bad guys until they die to collect X number of pelts to return to a quest giver for gold. Back in the old MS-DOS days I used to play an RPG, I think it was an Ultima game, but I don't remember specifically, that didn't have individual player story lines. Instead it dropped you in a world where things weren't quite right. You started off a young person with nothing but some money. You had to find a town to call home. You had to decide what you wanted to be in this world by finding a guild of your choice to apprentice with. You built a reputation in this world by helping your guild. You could take new jobs, mundane or exciting. It was your choice whether you decided to become a hero questing in the world, setting out to right the world's wrongs with a sword that you bought (or was given to you by someone you befriended or saved), or just a merchant in your village... allowing the rule of the evil king to continue while you used your own influence to gain power within your city, perhaps to eventually overthrow him politically instead of physically. You chose the ladder you wanted to climb and you chose how to climb it. That's what I wanted out of TOR, but instead of everybody else being a computer related NPC, I could do it with real people, in the Star Wars universe. Let's go back to my bounty hunter. Instead being dropped into the Great Hunt with the goal of getting revenge on Taro Blood I should be dropped.... on a planet. Some planet that makes sense for the particular race I chose. From there if I chose to become a bounty hunter I should fall into it by some logical means: Perhaps by going to the local authorities looking for criminals to bring to justice. I should then HEAR about the the great hunt. "Say you're pretty good. Ever think about the great hunt to REALLY make a name for yourself?" but if I DO enter the great hunt I should be up against OTHER player characters. We all inhabit the same world after all. Instead of the Great Hunt being something every one of us completes, it should be something that only one of us on the server (world) is able to win. Each of us may be given different targets, which means we could have different levels of success (This year in the Great Hunt I got 4 of my 6 targets before Bounty Hunter ABC won! I'm getting better) but it should be a global event. As I progress I could eventually buy or steal a ship to go off world and take bounties where I choose to find them. I should be able to make a name for myself in a unique way that other player characters care about. My reputation in the world should matter. Other players should be able to hire me to help them, not just with their missions, but with anything. "I really need to find item Y, but it is protected by this cartel. Let's hire a bounty hunter. Do you know a good one? Oh this guy is on all the time. He's twice as expensive as the others but you can count on him to deliver." Player interaction and role playing on a massive scale. Troopers should be able to grow up to be Generals or pilots, even politicians and leaders. They could retire from the military and join local law enforcement. Wouldn't it be fun to be a backwater sheriff on Tattoine? Bounty Hunters could come in and bribe you to tell them about the local goings on to help them find their current targets. You'd be investigating smugglers like Han Solo, turning a blind eye to the Hutts as they bribe you/offer to keep a modicum of the peace. Or you could be the young buck who is determined to civilize this godforsaken rock and bring some justice to it, possibly making the Hutts nervous and anxious to hire a bounty hunter to assassinate you as you get more successful. In any event the decisions you make, the actions you take during the story you develop change the world around you and affect the characters and other players. The possibilities are endless. A Republic Leader could decide "It's time to take Korriban back" and initiate an all out war for the planet. THAT'S how you do PVP. You don't have fights because fights are fun arena style (unless that arena fits thematically, such as placing one in Tattoine) The result of that war should have lasting consequences and shouldn't be predetermined. If the alliance wins, they gain control of the planet, and have to deal with occupation. Player characters who were generals in that battle could now become responsible for governing areas of the planet, keeping it under control and establishing / hiring law enforcement. Player characters who took a more 'merchant' path now have to figure out if they are Imperial men and subtly lead covert strikes against the occupiers, or decide to embrace their new republic overlords and sell to them instead. Clearly lots of these kinds of things are impossibly large in scope but my goal here is to describe the kind of things that this KIND of game would aspire to... I'm trying to build a theme. We will never see these kind of elements in an MMO like this. That's not to say TOR is wrong. It never wanted to BE what I'm describing. I don't blame a cat for not being a dog. It's just that there are an awful lot of cats out there right now (WoW clones) and it's tough to tell them apart. It also turns out that there are some of us who are Dog people. ------------------------ To clarify: I didn't expect SW:TOR to be everything that I described, but I had hoped that it had some of those sorts of those elements. What I tried to describe is equivalent to when you see a company put out a "The kind of thing we COULD do with this" video, like the recent Google Project Glass video, or the Wii-U video. You know that they can't pull off that level of interaction, but that's the kind of inspiration they're pulling from to get what they can. In other words, I NEVER expect to play a game like the one I described, but I'd love to play a game that was built with that kind of thing in mind, and I don't think that's impossible. All that said, I do not blame SW:TOR for not being like this. I'm not leaving because I think it's wrong for being what it is. I'm not leaving because I blame Bioware for advertising it as something it isn't (they never did that). I'm leaving because this game in't that fun FOR ME. It isn't that different. It's another cat. I'm not upset and I don't feel cheated. Bioware promised a cat, I thought I wanted a cat, but after owning a cat for several months it turns out what I really want is a dog. That's nobody's fault but mine. I just think that there is potential for something really special here if someone as solid as Bioware decided to take this in a different direction. Meanwhile I think there is some positive discussion that can be had that DOES relate to SW:TOR: Quests without stakes are a Bad Thing. SW:TOR can certainly do a few things to increase it's RPG element which will vastly improve player investment and further differentiate itself from WoW.

Let me clarify something here: I didn't expect SW:TOR to be everything that I described, but I had hoped that it had some of those sorts of those elements. What I tried to describe is equivalent to when you see a company put out a "The kind of thing we COULD do with this" video, like the recent Google Project Glass video, or the Wii-U video. You know that they can't pull off that level of interaction, but that's the kind of inspiration they're pulling from to get what they can. In other words, I NEVER expect to play a game like the one I described, but I'd love to play a game that was built with that kind of thing in mind, and I don't think that's impossible. All that said, I do not blame SW:TOR for not being like this. I'm not leaving because I think it's wrong for being what it is. I'm not leaving because I blame Bioware for advertising it as something it isn't (they never did that). I'm leaving because this game in't that fun FOR ME. It isn't that different. It's another cat. I'm not upset and I don't feel cheated. Bioware promised a cat, I thought I wanted a cat, but after owning a cat for several months it turns out what I really want is a dog. That's nobody's fault but mine. I just think that there is potential for something really special here if someone as solid as Bioware decided to take this in a different direction.

Howdy everybody. I am thinking about canceling my Star Wars account, and thought I should communicate why because I think I'm not the only person who was looking for something in this game that didn't find it. I'm curious about what others think. Before I begin I'd like to say that I understand what I'm about to describe, the game I hoped SW would be, is likely impossibly large / too grand to be implemented. This isn't a spoiled child saying "but I wanted a PONY" but rather my blue sky view of what something like this could be and a significant way to differentiate your game from WOW. None of what I'm about to say amounts to SW:TOR is broken because it doesn't do these things, TOR is very good at being what it wants to be... what I'm about to describe is a completely different game. What I wanted in SW:TOR was the ability to inhabit a world in which space wizards exist. I wanted to be dropped into the world as an individual and build my own story. There should be some over-arching world plotline that grows and advances... that encourages me to interact with others, but there is something subtly broken in allowing people to inhabit the same world where they all played through the same story. I was a bounty hunter. Every other person who was a bounty hunter was in the same Great hunt, going after the same target, with the same Mako as a partner. If we REALLY were inhabiting the same world that's impossible. There aren't a million Mako clones for each of us to have. This means that I wasn't inhabiting the same world as other bounty hunters. It means I was inhabiting my own universe, and they were running through their own parallel one. We'd team up only when we needed bodies to throw at a particular mission. This 'Breaking the story' thing happens when there are missions that can be run multiple times. How many times can I attack the same satellite? Why is it still there? Didn't I blow it up yesterday? There aren't any stakes in these missions. There can't be. When I complete them they're still there to be done again tomorrow. Nothing has changed by my success or failure at the mission. It's about Global Continuity. Without this I argue that you've removed the RPG element completely. "You just don't like MMORPGs" I hear you saying. Not so. I don't like this particular implementation of them. The implementation that sacrifices the RPG element completely. There's nothing in the words "Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game" that says that you have to have grind quests, that everybody has to have access to the same quests, that you have to dungeon crawl the same dungeons, clicking on bad guys until they die to collect X number of pelts to return to a quest giver for gold. Back in the old MS-DOS days I used to play an RPG, I think it was an Ultima game, but I don't remember specifically, that didn't have individual player story lines. Instead it dropped you in a world where things weren't quite right. You started off a young person with nothing but some money. You had to find a town to call home. You had to decide what you wanted to be in this world by finding a guild of your choice to apprentice with. You built a reputation in this world by helping your guild. You could take new jobs, mundane or exciting. It was your choice whether you decided to become a hero questing in the world, setting out to right the world's wrongs with a sword that you bought (or was given to you by someone you befriended or saved), or just a merchant in your village... allowing the rule of the evil king to continue while you used your own influence to gain power within your city, perhaps to eventually overthrow him politically instead of physically. You chose the ladder you wanted to climb and you chose how to climb it. That's what I wanted out of TOR, but instead of everybody else being a computer related NPC, I could do it with real people, in the Star Wars universe. Let's go back to my bounty hunter. Instead being dropped into the Great Hunt with the goal of getting revenge on Taro Blood I should be dropped.... on a planet. Some planet that makes sense for the particular race I chose. From there if I chose to become a bounty hunter I should fall into it by some logical means: Perhaps by going to the local authorities looking for criminals to bring to justice. I should then HEAR about the the great hunt. "Say you're pretty good. Ever think about the great hunt to REALLY make a name for yourself?" but if I DO enter the great hunt I should be up against OTHER player characters. We all inhabit the same world after all. Instead of the Great Hunt being something every one of us completes, it should be something that only one of us on the server (world) is able to win. Each of us may be given different targets, which means we could have different levels of success (This year in the Great Hunt I got 4 of my 6 targets before Bounty Hunter ABC won! I'm getting better) but it should be a global event. As I progress I could eventually buy or steal a ship to go off world and take bounties where I choose to find them. I should be able to make a name for myself in a unique way that other player characters care about. My reputation in the world should matter. Other players should be able to hire me to help them, not just with their missions, but with anything. "I really need to find item Y, but it is protected by this cartel. Let's hire a bounty hunter. Do you know a good one? Oh this guy is on all the time. He's twice as expensive as the others but you can count on him to deliver." Player interaction and role playing on a massive scale. Troopers should be able to grow up to be Generals or pilots, even politicians and leaders. They could retire from the military and join local law enforcement. Wouldn't it be fun to be a backwater sheriff on Tattoine? Bounty Hunters could come in and bribe you to tell them about the local goings on to help them find their current targets. You'd be investigating smugglers like Han Solo, turning a blind eye to the Hutts as they bribe you/offer to keep a modicum of the peace. Or you could be the young buck who is determined to civilize this godforsaken rock and bring some justice to it, possibly making the Hutts nervous and anxious to hire a bounty hunter to assassinate you as you get more successful. In any event the decisions you make, the actions you take during the story you develop change the world around you and affect the characters and other players. The possibilities are endless. A Republic Leader could decide "It's time to take Korriban back" and initiate an all out war for the planet. THAT'S how you do PVP. You don't have fights because fights are fun arena style (unless that arena fits thematically, such as placing one in Tattoine) The result of that war should have lasting consequences and shouldn't be predetermined. If the alliance wins, they gain control of the planet, and have to deal with occupation. Player characters who were generals in that battle could now become responsible for governing areas of the planet, keeping it under control and establishing / hiring law enforcement. Player characters who took a more 'merchant' path now have to figure out if they are Imperial men and subtly lead covert strikes against the occupiers, or decide to embrace their new republic overlords and sell to them instead. Clearly lots of these kinds of things are impossibly large in scope but my goal here is to describe the kind of things that this KIND of game would aspire to... I'm trying to build a theme. We will never see these kind of elements in an MMO like this. That's not to say TOR is wrong. It never wanted to BE what I'm describing. I don't blame a cat for not being a dog. It's just that there are an awful lot of cats out there right now (WoW clones) and it's tough to tell them apart. It also turns out that there are some of us who are Dog people.

another q... if I swap slicing for something else, and don't like it, if I swap back will I have lost all my slicing experience?

but that credit gain is so slow that randomly wandering the map and killing enemies is far more profitable. I've also found far more crew missions and schematics with underworld trading than slicing

what are 'mats'? As to what is more profitable... My other skill is Underworld Trading and I've found it many many many times more profitable to run that skill and sell what I've found. Your basic 25 minute underworld trading mission nets 2 level 4 goods that I can sell for around 2000. Slicing = 200, UT = 2000.

So I'm new to the game... chose a bounty hunter and picked up slicing because Mako is so good at it. I'm up to around level 25 and have been slicing left and right and I honestly don't see a reason why I should continue with this skill. a 1000 cost mission nets between 1200 and 1700... if it isn't a complete failure in the first place. It also takes 25+ minutes. Factoring in the failed missions, I'm seeing about a 200 credit gain per mission for 25 minutes of time given up. It's far more effective to just roam the field as your basic enemy drops more than that at this point. Am I missing something? What makes slicing worth it? Why would anybody pick this profession?