That's actually what I was expecting them to do, but then I realized that if that were the case, Bioware was basically breaking the 4th wall at the end of the 9th chapter when they show Marr and Satele off in the distance on Odessan watching the Alliance build their base and Marr says "It's too bad so many of them will have to die". Maybe in the next xpac, they'll just have the PC wake up one day and realize everything in KotFE and Kotet was just a bad dream. lol

The problem with the OP's question and the implications made by other posts in this thread is that a lot of it is going to be based on KotFE's wretched Chapter 12 "Visions in the Dark", unquestionably the worst bit of plot, character, and design in the entire game. It seems that in their desire to emulate Empire Strikes Back with their story (something at least one of the writers has admitted), they felt the need to have a chapter devoted to unlocking the Force's mysteries while having a wise and sagely Master hold your hand along the way, much like Luke's time of learning on Dagobah. Unfortunately, when they sat down to come up with it, all we ended up with was the swtor equivalent of "covfefe". It made no sense, either in context of KotFE's story, or in context of all other lore to do with the force, both in canon and legends continuities. So I have a hard time judging what "should" or should not happen to a character based on something that awfully written or characterized.

If any of these have been mentioned in the previous 27 pages of posts, fine, but I didn't feel like reading 27 pages of responses to double check. Things I Like: 1. The focus on Group content and return to MMO features. 2. New rewards for an "old" event (they need to do the same with other events). 3. Legacy perk for CXP that can translate to alts. 4. New Manaan Stronghold...finally. 5. Rare drops from Ops bosses again 6. A New Warzone. Things that Puzzle me: 1. It's great that class balance and comp customization is happening, but it should've been fixed a long time ago, not introduced as a cool new thing. 2. What took so long to get the Roadmap out if it had hardly anything new in it that the players didn't already know, and only covered the next 3 months? 3. "We'll review and adjust which companions you received through Alliance Alerts" ...What does this mean? People will lose comps and be given others regardless of what they did? 4. "We will regularly look to offer more customization improvements..." Without any specifics, the whole QoL section seems like wishful thinking. You might as well have said "We plan on improving the game". Yeah, cause we haven't heard that before.... 5. You mentioned "Where are we headed in the Long run?" but then decide to only commit to 3 month roadmaps.... What Annoys me: 1. Does Bioware realize how god awful their so called "story" content has been over the last two cycles? I can't believe you actually paid someone to come up with the Iokath circus. Does anyone question what's put forth? Do any internal discussions happen about it, ones where someone uses their brain? 2. Does anyone realize that the treatment of returning comps has been awful? You guys repeat the farcically bad "returns" the way they were done with Iokath, and I'm gone for good. 3. "We’ll set expectations for how we want to interact to keep our engagement productive" Really? Maybe you should start by naming the Roadmap "Star Wars: The Old Republic 3rd Quarter 2017, or Summer 2017" instead of just "Roadmap 2017". 4. No plans to deal with disparity in BiS geared players vs bolstered players in pvp? really?

Not so much a "flaw" per se, as a key to what makes them tick, and something that would cause them to act a certain way later on, something that humanizes them. We could understand some sort of emotion coming from Theron about the Republic and his family, but Lana? What would upset or drive her to do...anything? What would she wrestle with? The Empire, where Sith are constantly backstabbing each other anyway, her family (does she even have any?) There's actually not hardly anything that seems to "challenge" Lana as a character. Lol, that is a problem BW will always have with this game since players always think the PC is the "exception to the rule" even when it comes to how they treat others, further missed out on when the "choices that matter" ended up being nothing but marketing BS. Also, how they categorize/align the LS/DS choices could use some help. As long as they don't have at least two different story paths, it will never work well either. You can't have people reacting the same way to a LS character and their choices as a full DS character and their choices. It simply doesn't make sense. I remember when she came out and everyone gasped at how ugly she was. Of course, they didn't leave her that way. She got a serious makeover for KotFE. Even though it makes sense for her to be ugly with DS corruption, that's not the end product we got. Once again, though, we run into the games "choice" mechanics. Nothing ever came of sparing or not sparing certain people, despite what we were told. So it's hard to gauge how much it mattered to kill person x or not. Additionally, no one in their right mind spares Arcann. Not even the most noble Jedi would've realistically done so. There's too many reasons why it makes no sense.

Don't remember Gravus. Haven't done Taris storyline in a long time. Marr I never got a calm impression from. He's in control of himself, sure, but there's always a violent current that seems to simmer just below the surface, waiting for the right moment to burst out. Kudos to the Voice Acting. I thought he was generally portrayed well, though wasted too quickly. Acina was interesting in the brief time she was in Kotet, then Iokath happened, and ruined her characterization completely. Even so, nearly all Sith I can recall both in game and elsewhere act with some semblance of self-serving behavior. It's a side effect of Dark Side users. Altruism and the Dark Side just don't go together. But, we don't ever see any of that from Lana. The cruel things she advocates are always in support of a mission objective, never personal.

Only in a pragmatic sense, and she never really puts her foot down about any of it beyond maybe the time she "allowed" Theron to be captured on Rishi. My point is the writers gave her all the "best attributes" while leaving her no "drawbacks".

They're loyal to Bioware's writers, and that's it. They're the narrative guides Bioware's using to shove players down one avenue or another. You could make the case they're loyal only to the Outlander now, but I don't see that as realistically possible unless they're the chosen romance option. Then it might be believable that they rejected all their former associations and ideals in favor of a romance. There's too many inconsistencies within their own behaviors to warrant a cohesive rationale for their loyalty. Theron: caves in far too easily when the Outlander decides in favor of the Empire on Iokath. Sure, he may have some unresolved daddy issues, but there's no way he's turning on Satele so easily. Also, he seems not much bothered by all the tyrannical behavior of a full DS Outlander, despite how similar it is to all the tyranny he's trying to stop. Lana: Is the most obvious narrative contrivance in the game. Blonde bombshell, powerful force using woman. She's Sith, so no worries about Romantic entanglements being a problem, but has the calm disposition of a Jedi, so no worries about the crazy fits of rage normally associated with Sith. She reminds me of a certain Asari in Mass Effect or even the race of Asari in general: powerful force wielding women, all good looking, live forever, can mate with anyone or anything. Okay, Bioware, we get it, but can't they have at least one flaw? I mean, Theron at least has family issues, some personal soul searching related to his lack of force potential, and guilt over what he's asked to do as a spy, but Lana has......nothing.

There are ways they could do this. It really comes down to whether they think it will draw new/bring back players if they fork out the money to do new mo caps for new weapon moves, since really, any new class should have a different weapon or at the very least, new moves with existing weapons. 1. The Zakuulan Outcast: Disgruntled Veteran who leaves Zakuul to wander the Core worlds. Could be a sort of engineering class since Zakuul had much more advanced technology than the Republic or Empire, and their tech skills would be in high demand. Primary weapon would be a Blaster Rifle, but would use a different offhand, perhaps a tech device of some sort. Primarily Support role (damage or healing), Damage specs work best on mobs of adds. 2. Tythian Scion: Originally the rising star among the Scions, this prodigy was shunned and cast aside once the Outlander appeared and the Visions "changed". In hiding and cut off from their previous life, they travel the core worlds looking for a purpose...Strong force user class, with different abilities than the Jedi or Sith. A lot of interesting things you could do with this class. Since the character is a reject of sorts, they would carry a chip on their shoulder, resulting in a fierce damage/tank class. Primary weapon is the Saber Pike (with animations that make sense for it). 3. Droid Class: Yes, I know, strange, but hear me out. There are a number of threads I've seen where players ask to play as droids. Well, make a Droid Class. No storyline for it, just a Droid Class that allows players to level through heroics and do endgame activities as a droid. You could use a combination of Merc/Agent animations for dual weapons, tech attacks, or already existing droid animations for special abilities. Just don't make it OP, since it would undoubtedly be a ranged class. Would be a dps/healing class. (would also create a whole new line of things to sell in the CM) 4. Hutta Gladiator: Forged in the Fighting Pitts of their Hutt Masters, this Fighter finally won their freedom, and immediately left Hutta to see the galaxy for themselves. Melee Damage class with bladed weapons. Wields dual Vibroswords or Shock clubs depending on dps or tank spec. 5. The Czerka Infiltrator: Jobless after Czerka's dissolution, this expert and very seductive corporate spy lends their services to the highest bidder among the Galaxy's most powerful elite. Stealth Class with a mix of range and melee abilities, damage/tank spec with some self heals. Skilled and equipped for a Spec Ops smash and grab, but refined enough to quietly sneak in and take what they need without a fight. Primary Weapon would be a shotgun/wrist launcher (tank spec) or blaster pistol (dps spec). Pro's: -All of them could easily fall into either faction. -They could all be insta-started at lvl 70 (whenever the next xpac is dropped) and could be assumed to be the "Outlander" of before, or someone new if they make a fresh start with the story. -Would refresh some interest in the game. People notice when games add new classes. -Some of them would open up new/more options to make for the Cartel Market. -Could use the opportunity to unveil a new playable alien race. Cons: -Some of them are more similar to existing classes if you're just going by the descriptions. You would have to have drastically different abilities and animations to avoid eye rolls. -Would require new motion capture animations for new weapons and moves. -Would require a story "re-set" or tell players that insta starting one of them will put them in a set place in the storyline, with various comp/LS/DS choices already decided for them. -Would require coming up with all new names/descriptions/animations for at least most if not all of their moves and abilities. *I doubt we will see anything of the sort, since we keep getting less and less with each content "release", but maybe some day they'll wake up and invest in the game.

Here's the thing. The story is where they chose to go with design direction for the game. Both 4.0 and 5.0 were built entirely around providing a compelling story to entice ppl into playing the game. Think about that for a minute. They spent entire yearly cycles of developing content JUST for stories. Also, the original development of the game was entirely around the storylines. So much so, in fact, that they had hardly anything for an end game ready for players after launch, resulting in mass player departures. So, sure the storylines are better than other MMO's. That's what they spent their time on. However, despite the fact that this was their development focus in 4.0, KotFE was a terribly written story full of plotholes, cliches, nonsensical choices, contrivances, and inconsistencies with both their own material and pre-existing Star Wars lore. They should have learned from that. The fact that a year and a half later, they're still pumping out badly written story shows they haven't actually learned much, if anything from that.

Except, they're not from 2-3 years ago. 4.0 was last year and it had several successive credit exploits that blew up the game economy so bad, it still hasn't come back down. The HM Master Blaster fix was only rolled out in 5.2, though now there's at least one more issue with the fight. There are still issues with some Class Story missions. There's currently at least one bugged FP boss that's been that way since 4.0. The final fight with Arcann was bugged in 4.0 and sometimes still gets players stuck.

I would put bugs in four categories: 1. Cosmetic = mainly appearance oriented. There's a lot of these, and there's always a bunch of new ones with each patch, but occasionally they put out maintenance patches to deal with them. Currently, Graphical glitches, or clothing glitches would be an example of these. Not the biggest deal, but it takes away from immersion. 2. Convenience = These are bugs that cause the player to take a different route, strategy, battle, or plan to accomplish "x" thing in the game. Broken quicktravel, Broken Courting Gifts, directed the wrong way, sprint turning off for no reason, comps disappearing during combat, the inability to summon any, or a server rollback would all be examples of these. You can still play and progress, but it just takes longer and may cause a facepalm or two every time they crop up. 3. Progress = These are bugs that prevent the player from accomplishing "x" in the game at all. The "meat tree" on Rishi, the broken Revan fight, Class mission problems, broken FP bosses or Ops bosses are all examples of these. They directly block players from getting things done or enjoying their preferred activity. While some get fixed quickly (Revan fight), others are allowed to linger for months at a time (DP NiM Raptus, HM Master Blaster, Class Mission problems). 4. Maintenance = These are the bugs that in one way or another allow imbalances or exploits into the game, creating an unfair playing field in some way (they have to be a bug, NOT a bad design decision). Broken class ability, Saber Reflect working on things it shouldn't, credit exploits, and the "Ravagers exploit" are all examples of these. They create situations where players either "cheat" and gain an advantage, or "lose out" in some way to players who do. While I'm sure other MMO's have bugs like categories 1 and 2, I can't imagine they have a ton of them from categories 3 and 4. Swtor has shown a disturbing trend in recent years. The amount of content has slowly shrunk, but the amount of bugs in all categories, particularly damaging ones in the 3rd and 4th categories have actually increased. It should be the opposite.

In short, yes. You can't flirt with anyone else AT ALL, not even once, if you want Watcher 2's romance option. That being said, there's not much romance after she becomes Keeper, though you still get to flirt some times, and the SOR mission was cutesy in its own way if you pick the right dialogue options. While that might sound disappointing, I would still take her over Kaliyo or Raina any day of the week.

It's not beyond reason to assume that because the game has a new producer that some things might....I dunno....change, including the treatment of Love Interests, no matter what the previous answer was. It's also not unreasonable to complain that their "answer" from before about an important aspect of the game is inadequate for what we want to see as customers/gamers. So that in the future, that "answer" will change. Changes have been made to the game that were due directly to player input. It's also not unreasonable to assume that even if there was a different "answer", it would be disappointing, since nearly everything about the treatment of companions has been disappointing since 4.0. That doesn't even take into account all the times we've been given "answers"/promises about topics that never actually materialized at all.

Storywise: 1. They needed to fracture the Alliance first before sending us to Iokath and talking about treaties with other factions. There were a lot of ways to do this that made a lot more sense than "Oh noes, my ships! Better pick someone's hand to hold...." Nature abhors a vaccum. There are all kinds of issues and problems that would emerge in a post-Eternal Empire Galaxy that could easily fracture an Alliance that's really based on nothing anymore except the person leading it (since there's no more common enemy). 2. They need to stop butchering/making irrelevant their own characters and constructs to put the PC where they want. The blatant contriving completely removes any sense of enjoyment or immersion since it's as if someone took a huge poorly scrawled sign saying "GO THAT WAY NAOW!" and shoved it in your face every time there's a story bit. 3. They need to start accounting for player decisions better. Currently, it's obvious that if any of the NPCs could have been killed in the story, they just get made invisible for the rest of the time since BW doesn't want to develop any alternatives. Where were Koth, Senya, and Arcann during all the Iokath stuff? Oh, that's right....Well, even though I spared them, guess we won't be seeing them again, much like Jorgan and Kaliyo? 4. They need to stop lying about the Love Interests. When folks complained during 4.0 about the companions not being brought back. The response was that they only wanted to bring them back when it "meant something to the story". Well, that didn't exactly happen, did it? The entire Kotet xpac was released with absolutely zero comps returning during the chapters. The two comps most closely associated with the Emperor (Kira and Scourge) never showed up the whole time we were dealing with him. The latest "reunion" was downright awful. Both Quinn and Dorne had such little participation in the actual story (speak a few lines, disappear when things go bad), they could easily have been swapped out for random NPCs. Quinn's explanation for what he was up to and why you wouldn't have been able to find him was believable, but Dorne? ***! Her "excuse" was that she was Malcolm's assistant all this time?! That was their convincing explanation as to why she couldn't be found? And she couldn't contact the PC because...she had responsibilities?! This ranks right up with some of the nonsense from KotFE in terms of plain stupid writing. The long and short of it is BW just doesn't want to invest the money for the LI storylines, and would rather just stick all players with option 1 or 2 (Lana or Theron) and if forced to, tack some returning comps into bits of story to say they brought them back. 5. They need to come up with more and better conceived enemies and npcs. At this point, most of the named NPCs in the SWTOR universe have been killed off. We need a fresh batch of relevant ones that players will like enough to want to dive into the swtor universe again and again. Mechanical enemies weren't the way to go after having to deal with Skytroopers and Gemini droids for the last two years. *In short, they just need to fire their writers and get better ones that actually understand what a story is and what makes it compelling, instead of trying to wrap their story and Character development purely around forcing the PC into whatever plot moment they want.

As mentioned by others, Courting Gifts are broken, and have been since sometime in 4.0. As far as them getting fixed, well....you can see how much they care about it since it's been broken for so long. As far as the romance itself, her character was handled horribly and the "reunion" was little more than a few sentences and a kiss before she gets shuffled in with the other drones.

This, so much this. The fact that the whole thing is reminiscent of Mass Effect is another symptom of how lazy and unoriginal Swtor has become. If you can't figure out how to do something new and original, just ripoff what worked for some other franchise. That's not to say they will take the exact same approach, but so far, I've not been given much hope that their writing has improved much since Valkorion's demise.

Well, Iokath promised much in that it was our first departure from Zakuul/Valkorion centered activities in two years, and returned the PC to two faction conflict everyone is so familiar with. The Good: 1. Moving away from Zakuul centered activities, further leaving all the messed up things about Kotet and Kotfe behind. 2. Iokath has a new and different design from other places in the swtor universe. Closest thing I could compare it to is Directive 7, but even that has fundamental differences in look to Iokath. Some people might not like the visual elements, but I like the design/appearance of things on Iokath, and though Tyth looks a little like a Gypsy Danger ripoff, I still like the look of it. 3. A new daily area, with new mats nodes (much needed), and missions. 4. A new Ops boss (Tyth) that is actually sufficiently challenging. 5. Tries to address the PC's relationship with the game's main factions. The Neutral: 1. Attempted to foster some open world pvp: while open world pvp can be quite fun and different other vehicles are available to use, it's plainly obvious the game's engine can't handle any large groups and struggles sometimes with small groups. Also, given the lack of both class and gear balance, the idea of suddenly throwing a bone to pvpers seems both humorous and disingenuous. 2. New vehicles to use on Iokath (mouse droid, monitor, walker, Tyth): again, sounds like a good concept on paper, but put into action, it's kinda clunky and lame (except for maybe turning into Tyth to crush enemy players spawn camping your base). The Bad: 1. "Contrive, Contrive...you must contrive!": The storyline continues to be so utterly contrived, you'd think it was written for a child audience. --We've built our Alliance into the foremost power in the Galaxy, but we're told we now need the obviously weaker Empire or Republic because....reasons. --There's no reason on earth for the enemy leader to give you a holocall to warn you they found a secret entrance and they're going to fire the weapon and kill everyone and you obviously failed. 2. Horrible Handling of Companions: If you didn't know them before, you won't now. They have all of something like two lines before joining the throng of drones that make up the rest of the comps in your arsenal. If you do know them from before, it is even worse. --Quinn is handled a bit better than Dorne, but you'd think there'd be a lot more to do to catch up with your long lost love besides a "I still love you" "ok" "kiss" the end. --So the grand explanation for Elara's absence and inability of Theron, Lana, and Jorgan to find her was...wait for it: She was Supreme Commander Jace Malcolm's Assistant the whole Freaking Time! And she didn't feel she could approach you or even CONTACT you because...she had responsibilities? This is possibly the stupidest explanation possible for her absence and return anyone could come up with! I was literally lmao it was so bad! --Twice in the space of the brief story content, they are both shown running off to God knows where to save their own hides while leaving their charges to die horribly. 3. Worst Daily Idea Ever: "Hey, let's make players pay to do dailies!" This smacks of the same "Grind for the chance to grind" nonsense that made everyone hate GC. LEARN YOUR LESSON ALREADY! --Why does one of the daily missions solely consist of moving some balls around? --Why do some of the laser nodes never reset so folks can get the "activation" daily done? --Why do I keep getting directed to go through the other faction's base to get to my own? 4. Scions: the dumbest force using faction ever (and that's saying a lot considering how dumb the prequel Jedi order is made to look). --Yeah, let's not show up to help when Odessan gets attacked, or the Outlander confronts Arcann, or Vaylin, or Valkorion....or anyone for that matter. --Yeah, let's not get revenge for our fallen brethren on Arcann.... --Yeah, let's wait until the Outlander is "forced" to join another faction, that has their own force users, to make our reappearance and make ourselves known. 5. You so funny Bioware: And here we thought you putting it off a week showed constraint, discipline, good business practices, and QA common sense. Oh, but it so wasn't. I can't recall a patch with this many bugs per content capita in any other release. The known issues list is starting to sound like one of those warnings they read at the end of a drug commercial while still trying to convince you it's a great thing you should try. 6. Too Lackluster to Warrant Grinding: A Daily area should be something that people will want to grind for either the rep to get something from the vendor or creds to use in game. Iokath inspires neither of those. All the other daily areas offer just as much if not more credits and most have faster run times. The CXP totals for some of the missions are paltry compared to the effort you have to put in (55 cxp pts for taking down world boss?). Credit totals are less than running Planetary Heroics (12-13k vs. 14-20k). TLDR: I had hoped that with the end of Valkorion, all that terrible writing and creative decision making was behind us, but apparently not, and it doesn't inspire much hope for the future if this pattern is going to repeat itself more times.

Same consensus my group came to. Some friends and I tried this last night, and ran into the same problem, huge red AOE drops without warning and pretty much instakills anyone in it, tank included, dcds notwithstanding. We theorized it had something to do with the debuffs/dots the adds put on you, but by that point, we had made a number of pulls on it and were tired of trying and none of us had a parser open to check the log for damage. Tried looking around for some kind of walkthrough, but no one has posted much of anything about Master Mode Uprisings. Eventually gave up and went to do Fractured for the Weekly. Haven't done any of the other ones, but given the lack of info on any of the Master Mode mechanics, kinda wondered if anyone had done them yet.

Tried to login and was told I was "12th in queue" for Harb. Every time this happens, it's never because of an overpopulation problem. It's server issues. Please fix soon.

I don't remember anything about an Iokathan Civil War, but whatever. Their own creations wiped them out. Fine. It's still not the most convincing explanation. Maybe with some more backstory about the Iokathan people themselves it might feel less like yet another contrived scenario? IMO Acina and Malcolm were both introduced as intriguing characters that were supposedly cut from different cloths than those of similar standing. Unfortunately, both of them got turned into Cartooney shadows of themselves in this story bit. It's pretty laughable. Why would you call your enemies to monologue about some secret entrance and their coming demise instead of just doing it? There's no reason to make that holocall, at all. And the ending is completely Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull material. I don't really care if Malcolm says it's about "securing peace" or not. When your people are starving and struggling to rebuild, you don't betray the people giving you aid and waste needed resources to get into a potential three way war with opponents who outnumber and outclass you in every category. It's just plain nonsense.

No, it isn't. There are several fundamental differences. 1. The underlying enemy in the entirety of the JK storyline is the emperor, and despite each planetary arc being repetitive, the goal is the same: consume the life of a world to make himself immortal. On Iokath, we have no explanation as to what or why these superweapons exist or who they answer to or were made to be used for. 2. In the JK storyline, despite how bad the Republic looks at times, overall, they try to do the right thing. People feel regret or are conflicted over x superweapon and the role they had in making/using it. Whereas in Iokath, the Republic are essentially, ungrateful warmongers. 3. No one "close" to the JK in the storyline ever pulls some huge betrayal, unless you count Kira under Vitiate's influence as a 'betrayal'. Whereas on Iokath, we're told someone "close to us" has betrayed us (though I have my doubts it will turn out to be anyone actually "close to us"). 4. You as a rank and file JK do not have command of the most powerful fleet and army at your disposal when you go through the class story. Whereas on Iokath, you're basically pigeonholed into joining one weaker faction or another, when you could essentially blow them both to bits without breaking a sweat. 5. In the JK storyline, much emphasis is on keeping the peace. Whereas on Iokath, despite all the recent destruction, all anyone can talk about is how happy they are to get a great big world eating weapon.

*slams face on keyboard in frustration*

So my commando stayed true to Elara, and upon completing the Iokath missions, resumed the Romance with her. I have the romance note in her codex entry and everything, BUT when I went to my stronghold to start feeding her the Courting Gifts I had stockpiled to push her influence to 50 SURPRISE! She doesn't like them. All romanced characters are supposed to like Courting gifts, even if for some of them it isn't their favorite, but Elara is currently treating them as if there is no romance and no influence is gained from them at all. Did they just decide to change this from pre-Knights Elara, or is this yet another bug in the new content?

And what exactly is "foreshadowed" about Kotfe or Kotet in the Jedi Knight storyline? There's nothing about Zakuul, Arcann, or Vaylin. The only things obvious from the JK story is that the emperor is not dead/takes incorporeal form and uses other "vessels" to do things through. Even if it were, it makes no sense for a JK or some of the other classes to become emperor, just as it makes no sense for other classes to end up with some cobbled together excuse for a JK class story.

For raiding guilds that are trying to get first(s) kill on the new Op boss, it does kinda screw them over that others are running in and downing it right now while they sit and twiddle their thumbs.