Well, the in-game way to get the old reputations built up would have been slot machines, but they kind of ran that into the ground and swept it under the rug when they tried to do that. (I'm about to pull a bunch of numbers from a spreadsheet that I threw together when this was a hot topic on the forums.) In one of the packs a while back there had been a decoration called the Contraband Slot Machine which had been intended to be the first in a series of slot machines. In its initial week of availability, the chances looked like: 25% = get nothing 20% = get your token back 10%, 8%, and 5% = get 1 green, blue, or purple Contraband rep 10%, 10%, and 10% = get 1 green, blue, or purple Jawa scrap item 2% = get 1 cartel certificate (Also, it was 500 credits for each token to feed into the machine.) People raised questions about the drop rates. The purple Jawa scrap in particular. The same patch that added the slot machine also added inventory to the Jawa vendors which made it possible to obtain the highest level materials from them, and the combination of the scrap stockpiles that people already had saved up prior to that from packs / conquest, the ease of obtaining new scrap from the slot machine, and the 1:1 pricing on almost all of the Jawas' stock meant that people were mass-producing top level purple crafting materials far far far FAR faster and cheaper than could ever be possible through the crew missions and these were flooding the GTN. (As a lesser sidenote, people also were getting quite a few certificates from the slot machine and they were posting a ton of the decorations (only option that isn't bound) that those can buy, like the Twi'lek dancers.) So in about a week or less after the release of this slot machine they changed the chances to look like this: 45% = get nothing 20% = get your token back 16.999%, 13%, and 4.5% = get 1 green, blue, or purple Contraband rep 0.2%, 0.15%, and 0.1% = get 1 green, blue, or purple Jawa scrap item 0.05% = get 1 cartel certificate 0.001% = get 1 re-skin of the walker mount (color specific to the faction of the character that used the slot machine) (Also, it's now 750 credits for each token to feed into the machine.) The slot machine is essentially just a rep token dispenser now. A broken dispenser which gives you nothing at all almost half of the time. There is a cumulative 0.501% chance to win something that is not a rep token. That's roughly 1 in 200 spins. Statistically, if you buy 200 tokens (150k credits) you should expect to see results that look something like: 90 tokens lost, 40 tokens returned (you'll re-spin these until they become a real result), 34 green rep, 26 blue rep, 9 purple rep, and maaaaaybe 1 other prize. Accounting for a few rounds of re-spins on the returned tokens, the expected results end up looking more like: 112.5 tokens lost, 42.5 green rep, 32.5 blue rep, 11.25 purple rep, 0.5 green scrap, 0.37 blue scrap, 0.25 purple scrap, and 0.12 certificates. (Total = 1.25 units of non-rep items.) It's pretty great for obtaining the rep items so you can max out the reputation. But after you've got the reputation maxed the rep items are only good for selling to the vendor to offset some of the cost of the tokens. Green sells for 500, blue sells for 1000, and purple sells for 2500. From the above expected values, that's 81,873.54 credits that you can expect to recover. That leaves 68,126.46 credits as what you actually spent to obtain whichever 1 non-rep item you might have gotten. They never released any other slot machines and they never addressed the concerns that the non-rep drop rates felt like they had been changed too far in the other direction. People have posted tons of suggestions about different things the devs could consider doing with the slot machine to make it feel more interesting to use without necessarily unbalancing things again, but it doesn't seem as if they ever want to touch the subject again. An idea could be... Replace the Jawa scrap drops with one "Smuggled Resource Crate". Make the odds on seeing that crate fairly decent, but the contents of the crate randomize between being a satchel (same satchels that are in security chests) or a few units of Jawa scrap (3 green or 2 blue or 1 purple). (Satchels contain multiple units of material but there's no control over what those materials will be so it's a much less versatile prize than the scrap. So the crate can be made to be more likely to drop the satchels than the scrap and people can see material prizes more often without it being a magic super material every time.) They could add a "Contraband Prize Ticket" with a much better drop rate than the Cartel Certificate. Then modify the Contraband vendor in the cartel bazaar to offer the option to pay for certain items with these prize tickets instead of cartel certificates. They could also add new items to the vendor that can only be purchased with prize tickets. This uses the rep vendor to expand the machine's prize pool without needing to add a ton of items to the machine itself. And they could use this format with other reputations as well. Or if they're really not going to add the other machines, maybe just replace the certificate drop with a "Sealed Prize Voucher" drop that has a fairly decent drop rate but is an item that you use to receive at random any type of prize ticket or a certificate. They'd also replace the rep item drops with a single "Smuggled Trophy Crate" drop which can randomize between ALL of the cartel rep tokens. The slot machine itself should probably be renamed to not specifically mention one of the cartel rep groups if they do this. They could also consider adding a drop for companion gifts, like maybe a "Smuggled Life Day Parcel" that you use to randomly receive one gift of ANY grade and quality. They'd have to be extra careful about the drop rates since the goal of the slot machine is for it to be a credit sink, not a credit generator. But they could consider adding the cartel items "credit boom" and "credit explosion" as possible rare drops. Or maybe add a special new lockbox that only drops from the slot machine and contains credits comparable to a mid-level slicing lockbox with a slim chance to also contain a credit boom or explosion. Even if the drop rates are low enough that you spend more before seeing it drop than you receive from it, seeing that big payout will make a player feel as if they've just cheated the system and it could encourage them to keep trying. Some will also feel compelled to try just knowing that something like that is a possibility.

Most (if not all) PVE relics have a disclaimer that the proc effect won't trigger in PVP areas. And that's not strictly about "instance". It applies in the open world to half of Ilum (the entire Gree event area) and also to Outlaw's Den on Tatooine, not just warzones. (I don't think the switch to typed instances has changed that behavior. Has it?) Strangely, PVP relics do not include a disclaimer prohibiting them from triggering in PVE areas. Outside of warzones though, I would suggest that the distinction ought to change to instance types instead of treating western Ilum and Outlaw's Den different from the rest of Ilum and Tatooine. If they didn't change it that way already. Anyway though, that is the right idea. It would make the tooltips a little wordy but they could theoretically just give several key abilities a PVE clause and a PVP clause. Ability does X, but only in PVE areas. Ability does Y, but only in PVP areas. The ability will deal damage / cost resources / trigger buffs / etc. according to what is written in either X or Y depending on whether you're in a PVE or PVP area. The more abilities they set up this way, the more options they have to tweak one side of the game without impacting the other. Hmmm thinking about something as an example... Consider how some classes have a passive which has different bonuses depending on which stance the character has active. Select abilities care about stance as well, like how the Juggernaut / Guardian has an ability which functions as an area taunt in Soresu form and as a threat reducer when not in Soresu form. Abilities and passives can be adaptive in this way. The suggestion to have PVE and PVP behavior for an ability really isn't too different a concept from stance-based ability behavior. It's just a condition check to choose between alternative clauses. Plus, taunts are already a special case in PVP. Taunts would be meaningless in PVP if they only had their PVE functionality, which is meant to be used against NPCs. Player characters don't acknowledge threat generation. So taunts have a separate function against player targets which reduces the taunted character's damage output if attacking any target other than the one that taunted them. If the devs ever have any reason to want to tweak the way tanking works, any changes to the way taunts affect player targets will have no impact on the way taunts affect NPCs. So that's another way that this can be approached. It doesn't even necessarily need to be about where you're fighting. It could be different behavior based on the type of target. Plenty of ways to make relevant distinctions to create different PVE and PVP behavior for abilities, really. (I'd suggest they focus on area-based and target-based ideas though. Don't linger on the example about stances enough to get ideas about adding PVP stances.)

I wonder... how involved is the game's post-4.0 capability to display different things to players standing in the same area? I know that the game can be selective about which NPCs it shows you. (Check the location of any KotFE recruit on a character that isn't on the recruitment mission for that companion. Only players on specific mission steps know that they're there. Companions lingering around on Odessen (inside and outside of the instanced base) will appear / disappear depending on if you summon them as your active companion, as well.) I've assumed but haven't actually looked to confirm yet that this also applies to environmental differences like the existence of the Star Fortress in the sky and the existence of its shield control bunker. I think that those aren't visible before KotFE and that the Star Fortress disappears from the sky after you've blown it up? If that's true, then yeah, something like could be a thing. It'd be a dig zone that's only available to those that have picked up the mission for it. (Easy enough. Current dig missions already have this distinction from the free-for-all treasure dig sites.) The object being searched for is a hidden switch that's buried somewhere. Instead of pulling something up it triggers a buried blast door to open up (those flat doors hiding a ramp down to an opening, like the Rakata vault doors), and only you can see this change in the environment. The opening that you find underneath might have to function like a flashpoint door, loading you into a separate map instead of having the instance on the planet. (Just to avoid complications when done with the mission and technically no longer on a mission step capable of seeing the opened blast door.) But you'd walk in and you'd have a place to explore with traditional objectives to complete. On the other hand, I suppose what I described there isn't too far off from just making a cutscene out of it. Finding the target would just force you into a cutscene or put you in a mission step asking you to use your holocom or something. The cutscene shows something opening up and shows you entering, then the game automatically loads you into a new map. Hmmm... Actually, another thought... Suppose that it unearths a hidden Rakata Transporter... Only a player on the mission step can see the transporter added to the environment. You teleport to an isolated region that's still on the planet but can't be accessed by normal means. No load screen necessary and you can easily quick travel out when you're done, or the transporter back at the beginning of the isolated region will take you back to where the other one had been unearthed. But then every ruin being discovered in this way is specifically from the Rakata and there might not be much variety between such locations on different planets.

I kind of get a bit annoyed at Black Hole and Section X for being separate maps from the rest of Corellia and Belsavis. I'd kind of like it better if additions like that were just sections of a large complete map instead of a separate zone. The opposite could be said after key points in the story such as after part 1 of Forged Alliances (Tython and Korriban flashpoints) and after the beginning of Knights of the Fallen Empire (5 years later). In those types of cases it would logically make sense to have brand new post-war versions of the planets which are brought up to date for events that have occurred and which feature new missions relevant to players at that point in the story. However, for gameplay convenience and freedom I think that access to old versions of a location must still be allowed. Do NOT follow the model of Ziost. Do NOT restrict access to outdated zones. To set up an example out of existing content, let's imagine that current versions of Taris and Balmorra were modified to allow each faction access to them. Suppose they can story gate it so that after Imperial players have reached upper level Taris in their class story line they can also access upper level Balmorra, with some dailies set up under the premise of trying to throw a wrench into the Republic story efforts going on at that time to liberate the planet. Likewise, after Republic players have reached upper level Balmorra in their class story line they can also access upper level Taris, with some dailies set up under the premise of trying to throw a wrench into the Imperial story efforts going on at that time to ruin the recolonization efforts. Maybe they could think of some reasoning like that to open up the lower level versions to both factions as well. For Imperials on lower level Taris I suppose it would just be a set of dailies around the same "ruin the planet" theme as later planet missions. For Republic on lower level Balmorra though? Hmmm, in the planet and class stories the Republic was officially neglecting Balmorra at that point... So I suppose if there's any reason to be there it's going to be as your character personally answering a distress call from someone in the resistance, not as an official representative of the Republic. But with all that set up, we'd then have both versions of both planets accessible after we get that far.

New ones could use some new types of missions (no ideas what to suggest) instead of just reskinning the same set that make up the current GSI missions. (Current formats: "Dig up the target. It's under these specific objects that you'll see on the surface." or "Scan a set of targets. Each of these locations has one." or "Scan for a specific target that will randomly be located at just one of these locations.") But yeah, the concept of the GSI dailies would work well for new additions to more planets and it's surprising that they haven't added more like that yet. Especially in KotFE with the addition of level sync. Really, with level sync the door is wide open to also have plenty of normal style missions to discover when you go back to old planets. The digging and scanning game mechanics were the basis of the current GSI missions because they didn't want to add level 55 enemies to the under-50 planets and digging/scanning generally avoids needing to fight over an objective. On top of that, it would also be nice if the seeker droid and macrobinocular mission chains could be possible to start at low levels so those and the dailies can be an option while leveling instead of only being end-game activity. (Although there may be continuity issues with that idea.)

??? Something had stuck out as being weird. It was no big deal for me because nothing was actually changed. It just seemed weird. But I saw this topic and I posted about the weird message because it seemed kind of relevant to the topic. You posted that the game was trying at that moment to convert the companion's data from the old affection system to the new influence system in an attempt to explain the message. But this is blatantly untrue. (Of course, please correct me if that isn't what you were trying to say.) I happened to see that and I threw out a post saying that the attempted explanation wasn't actually saying anything relevant.... You go off the rails and act like I've been in some big huge debate with you about something and keep ignoring valid points in post after post after post after post after post exchanged with you? What...? Why...? *shrug* Whatever. (You could have just elaborated on your point / rephrased your point if I misinterpreted something and took it in the wrong direction there. No need for any of... whatever that was.)

[Double post removed. Sorry!]

Huh? Sorry, You're a bit confused if you thought that I had thought the old 10k affection would magically get converted into 250k influence at some point (especially so many months after the cap was raised). I didn't gain or lose anything. I didn't expect to gain or lose anything. I'm pretty sure that I didn't even imply that I thought I was going to gain or lose anything. The wonky business that I saw was that weird little message at the start about it supposedly suddenly adding 10k influence to make her rank 10 when it shouldn't have needed to do anything like that because she already had 10k influence from before 4.0 / before KotFE and wasalready rank 10 from that. The game did something weird there which kind of makes it seem as if somebody who isn't coincidentally at precisely 10k influence beforehand will gain or lose something at that point. It made it look as if the game just resets them and defaults them to an even 10k regardless of what it had been before. And I don't recall any other companions that I've had characters reunite with so far in any other chapters or in any of the recruitment alerts come up with that same message. I only saw it with Vette. So that also contributes to the "this seems buggy" vibe. Errr...What conversion would be happening there, exactly? All of the old companions were "converted" in patch 4.0 from a system that was capped at 10k to a system that is capped at 250k. (Which shouldn't have actually changed how the data was stored in any way. All it changes is the maxValue constant that's checked against to make sure that the value never gets set higher than intended. The values themselves remained untouched. (Side note relating to the response to Eanelinea: The influence rank display was a brand new feature which displays an abstraction of the stored value. We didn't have anything like that before 4.0. We only had the affection value.) Anyway, several months later when starting the newest KotFE chapter there should not be anything that still needed to be converted. Vette was already set up for the new system, even if I hadn't been using her in that time. Hmm... I don't recall any messages like this when 4.0 hit either... Although there was a lot of chaos in the 4.0 companion conversions with them dumping all of their gear into your inventory and mail. So someone could have been too caught up in all of that to notice something like this buried in with the usual login announcements. (stronghold keys, results from companions returning from crew skills, and whatever else.) Well, if that is when it was supposed to be seen, there's definitely no reason to see it for one character at the start of a KotFE chapter.

When I started the Vette / Gault chapter there were a couple messages right away as it started: "Vette has gained 10,000 influence" "Vette is now rank 10" And that struck me as odd because I know Vette had already been at 10 from before. (This was on a character that had maxed affection on their companions before 4.0 and did not level any of them up beyond that before starting KotFE.) It made it seem as if it that was the default starting place for her on non-Warriors and it was giving me that version instead of my own, or something like that. (Although she still had the customization that had been left on her and I got the gear she had been wearing dumped into my inventory. I think the gear was handled the same way with my Agent when getting Kaliyo back in KotFE, but I don't remember seeing the wonky influence and rank gain with her.) But there's no way to be certain that anything really went wrong there. That character is dark side and had ended up romancing Jaesa after he discovered that that was an option, so it was to be expected that the reunion was not a happy one. Anyway... Err... That's the planetary story arc for Republic Taris.

- follows link on that page to the Jedi's page, looks over images of him Okay... In one shot where his saber is shown, it's yellow. And in the other shot, it's green. Sooo.... What I just got out of this is: "Brown! The lightsaber color so rare that the only one known to have ever used it never used it!" (Yeah yeah, there's probably a lot more of him shown in whatever comics those are taken from and maybe there could be a better shot that didn't get uploaded to that page.)

Oh, prestige is kind of dumb to care about, for sure. It's a meaningless measure derived from the count of how many decorations you've ever unlocked (+100 for first copy of something and +2 for each additional copy). That total (doubled for subscribers) gets multiplied by the completion percentage and the result is displayed as a stronghold's "score" (visible to yourself, to anybody with a key to your stronghold, and to the public if you list it) and that's used to sort the publicly listed strongholds. Big woop, right? Some people do think it's a big deal though (aggressively shelling out millions of credits to claim and maintain their spot at the top of the public listings) and I'm pretty sure the devs think prestige is a bigger deal than most of us do. (I think the devs think that prestige measures decorating skill?) So that's why I speculated that the devs would make a priority out of adding some price scaling to diminish the impact of such an addition. The actual suggestion was just the part about adding a "buy an extra copy for myself" button to every item just like how some items have a "buy a copy for my guild" button. That's completion percentage that they're working with there. Somebody with the bare minimum number of decorations unlocked to be able to fill enough hooks with junk to cap out their stronghold bonus at 125% will have a lot less prestige than a collector who has one of everything else on top of that or someone who has a bunch of stuff unlocked to actually make several of their strongholds look nice. But the collector and the decorator will have the same 125% bonus as them.

I honestly have no clue what Steve thought he was trying to argue earlier with all that "Rakton is 52, not 52" talk. The big examples of a misstep in level sync are the final bosses that appear on Korriban and were reduced to starter planet level in 4.0 instead of finding some way to keep them at 50 as originally designed. All 8 classes reach their final boss either on or after Corellia. (Weren't there 1-2 others besides Trooper with a fight on the planet? The Consular's fight is there, isn't it?) Corellia's designed range is 48-50, and any final boss instances on the planet were designed for someone who is expected to be level 50. Final boss encounters that are in their own separate maps (like a ship or station) were also designed for someone who is expected to be level 50. Those cases remain unchanged with the addition of level sync. (Level 52 sync just puts us sort of close to the mark for level 50 scaling instead of letting us destroy the bosses with a character that's a significantly higher level than that.) It's just the classes that return to an earlier planet after Corellia for their final boss fight (Sith classes, Korriban) where 4.0 significantly changed the tone of the fight. In theory everything should even out because the enemy is rescaled for 10 and Korriban's level 12 sync puts you sort of close to the same mark as that rescaling. But in practice the rescaled enemy is very soft and inept compared to its original level 50 design and you could kill them by shaking a feather duster at them.

At no point in my post did I say "Just buy more from the GTN." That's how it currently works and it can get ridiculous as the supply of decorations obtained randomly from packs dries up. I referred to the option that shows up when you click on certain items in the decorations list (selection needs to be expanded) to buy a copy of that decoration for your guild. (To be fair, the pricing on those can seem like a bit much on some items. Some might just be 50k apiece but some are more like 250k or 500k or however much. But it is for the guild.) And the suggestion was to expand that concept into having an option on every item to buy another copy for yourself. (Logically since it's just for yourself, not a guild, the pricing would naturally be lower than the guild option. Probably starting in the range of the prices of the decorations that Felusia sells (2500, I think it was) and working up to something below that 50k or whatever it was at the bottom of the range of the guild prices.) Although one could imagine that they might also decide that costs ought to scale up based on previous unlocks to keep prestige rating growth in check. So everything has some baseline cost as described above and that's just for the first extra copy, and then maybe the cost goes up by 1% for each additional copy after that. (For a price starting at 2500 that would be a little over 4000 for the 50th extra copy purchased. For a price starting at 50k that would be a little over 82k for the 50th extra copy purchased.) One would also imagine that the option to buy extras for yourself would also have a cartel coin alternative payment option next to the scaling credits option. (Just like cargo space unlocks and costume tab unlocks.)

Errr.... I don't think you ever did get any helixes from those. I'm pretty sure they were always just the rep and the warzone comms. (Granted, I've only completed those two missions maybe a grand total of 2-3 times because I always just stayed out of the PVP area except for a few rare occasions with groups that got tired of the crowds at all the PVE locations for the heroic. But as I recall the PVP mission rewards never had helixes listed.) People just get confused about what missions were rewarding what when they turn in half a dozen missions at once, it seems. There have been comments like this about the Rakghoul event as well, thinking that all dailies used to give canisters when it's always been just the heroic and the beacons daily (and the waste of time hidden daily).

The scenario that explains why this isn't a thing: You spam-click "claim" countless times and receive tons and tons of free prestige from maxing out your count for each decoration you've ever obtained so much as a single copy of. It does touch upon a valid request that has come up before though. It would be nice if they could update the decorations interface to make sure that most (if not all) decorations have the "purchase a copy for guild" option and that those decorations would also have a "purchase another copy for myself" option. Currently it comes across as kind of random which decorations we're allowed to purchase for the guild and the only way to get extra copies of anything is by obtaining more copies of the consumable item for it.

There might be a few other cases here or there if you look at the class stories as a whole, not just the final bosses. Places in a story where we go to an instance on an earlier planet, where any enemies we find in the instance were originally (before level sync) at an appropriate level for that point in the story (now they're rescaled down to planet level, just like the Sith bosses). I know that some of these cases include Jedi Knight going to Ord Mantell after Coruscant, Sith Warrior going to Hutta at the end of chapter 1, and Jedi Knight going to Tatooine at the start of chapter 2. I think Agent and/or Bounty Hunter had some reason to go to Hutta later in the story as well. And there are tons of diversions in between planets and chapters in the Sith Inquisitor story (sooooo much runaround in that class story). Plus, the companion for each class that has actual missions occasionally (instead of only being conversations) may take you somewhere that you're expected to have visited already by the time you get the mission. But yeah, the Sith bosses are particularly noteworthy examples that stand out above those other examples, and where the bosses are concerned I've proposed in other topics like this that maybe they could move those areas into their own separate maps with a flashpoint-like loadscreen-triggering door instead of the regular on-planet instance door. That way the boss maps can be scaled for 50 as originally designed and they'd be subject to an appropriate sync for that level instead of being down at Korriban's level. This would maintain some semblance of the original design intentions, although I suspect that it'd still be a bit easier than it originally was when 50 was the cap.

I had noticed this as well. I didn't notice the part about it still working fine for gear being worn. (Is that true?) But I noticed that it seems as if they broke field modification somehow and now you can only pull stuff out at an actual modification table.

Does anyone ever run the Ziost world boss or the Ziost op boss? I've never had a chance to try either of them and I haven't seen anybody mention them since maybe the first week that Ziost was available. Because hard mode itself isn't already a big enough barrier on a chance for a drop? They've already got rare shinies exclusive to various hard / nightmare bosses, don't they? And even then it's only a chance that it will drop and then the group rolls for it if it does drop. Although to be fair your overkill of an idea does at least guarantee that the drop will be yours alone if it drops. No roll. Each person with the buff would have their own separate check with the system to see if it will drop for them. So that's something, at least. The fight has a weekly operations lockout for each difficulty (story and hard) and you specifically excluded one of them from being relevant in this. Someone would have to specifically arrange to have a hard mode group get together Monday and Tuesday (before and after the weekly resets on Tuesday morning) to get more than one use out of the same buff in that 24 hour period. Outside of that particular scenario, you're proposing an expensive single-use item that doesn't actually guarantee results. Good luck getting anybody to say that that sounds like a good idea. The rest of the post following this is much more practical and interesting than what you started out with. Decorations. Companion customizations. These are the kinds of ideas that have worked well to help bulk up the selection at other event / novelty vendors in the game. Draw some inspiration from both pre-event and post-event Ziost for things to add. And add some other mounts / vehicles as well. Because the bottom line really is your first sentence. The selection of things that the Ziost tokens can be spent on consists almost entirely of a bunch of 190 rating gear, most of which you get for free from the mission rewards running through the story there anyway. (So what's the point?) Aside from the gear, there's also a mount (meh), a holo globe (looks cool but I haven't felt a need to grab more than one), and a dead plant (I only really grabbed one for the sake of the prestige).

Throwing in my own guess at this topic's intention: I'm reminded of the way that a holorecord panel (or whatever they called it) in the Jedi class ship lights up for Jedi Knights after a while in the class story and when you click on it the "dialogue" cutscene offers two messages that you can read (no recordings, still just text) which are messages left for you by the guy from the end of Tython. Perhaps this topic is asking for followup messages to be presented on some new terminal that they'd add in (like how they added a mission terminal to the class ships for late game storyline pickups) using that sort of format instead of using the mailbox for these types of messages... Except, yeah, it does sound like voiceovers are being asked for. (Creating some busywork for some voice actors to revamp some old content of little importance.) edit: Hmmm... Everything in class and planetary storylines up through Makeb (or do they still do this through Rishi/Yavin/Ziost as well) has followup mail that includes some amount of credits and sometimes other rewards. The rewards given this way aren't exactly generous to begin with anyway, but would they implement a holo answering machine in a way that eliminates these rewards (just making something that functions exactly the same as the thing that Jedi Knights can see) or would they set up something that would somehow treat the recordings like "missions" on the first viewing for the sake of delivering these rewards (making something that functions more like the 8 Shroud messages that you get from those datacubes that were in some cartel packs a while back) but then offers the non-mission archive option (Jedi Knight example again) after that?

The boss thing is definitely a legitimate design flaw / oversight in the way they implemented it. Level sync itself isn't that bad, and just about all of the whining about it in so many topics basically amounts to a few PVPers that miss being able to grief people dozens of levels lower than them. But it's baffling how they made level sync as this universal setting applied to a planet as a whole instead of working out a way to apply it regionally. Because there were places on the planets that were outside of the regular leveling range of the planet. Instances where a player returned for story later in the game. The "bonus series" story areas on certain planets. The dread seeded area on certain planets. These areas got rescaled to cram them down into the planet's regular leveling range and it completely neuters any sense of challenge that they might have once had. (I'm pretty sure the game's AI system for enemies just does less with the same enemy under lower level conditions than it does for them at higher level conditions. We could see this with Bounty Week kingpins before 4.0 by trying the same one on wildly different level characters, and it's still kind of apparent post-4.0 as well if you can face the same henchman on different planets.) And it's not just about that. Even within a planet's regular leveling range there's variation in the levels because the story on the planet takes you through certain regions in a certain order. Heroic missions conform to that remnant of the pre-4.0 game design, which means that there can be a bigger gap between the sync level and the mission's level on some of the heroics compared to other heroics (Personal Challenge = 10, Friends of Old = 14, Dromund Kaas sync = 18, 8 level gap vs 4 level gap), which seems inconsistent for any attempts to "balance" heroic content within the post-4.0 game. So for those higher level spots on a planet and for the fine-tuning of lower level spots within a planet's normal range, it seems like it would have made a lot more sense to apply syncs on a case-by-case basis so that all situations would get the same standardized sync gap over the level of the content. You pass over a border between map regions and the system should automatically adjust to that next region's sync settings. That way any issues one way or another about the "difficulty" of any content may be addressed as precisely as possible.

I thought this thread was going to try to say something about wanting to be able to do something productive with the couple dozen or so companions that we can have at our command in Fallen Empire. Instead, it's... something about the situation that certain long-time players may have early on a brand new character if they've got cartel companions unlocked (specifically Treek, since she's the only one of them that can craft) and access to the subscriber reward companion and money to burn on an early unlock of Hk-51? I have never unlocked HK-51 in that way myself, because if it isn't a collections unlock like Treek I'd rather just wait and do the actual mission again. (I will not pay the per character unlock fee.) But I know that when I'm level 10 with Treek and Nico and the first class companion (if I was able to get that far in the class story before that level in our crazy fast post-4.0 leveling) and any of the non-crafting cartel companions (all the beasts and droids they've been adding in recent packs) max deployable says... 2? I think it starts at 2 and then reaches 3 at level 25? I often forget the levels when that limit goes up. Isn't it something like 3 at 25, 4 at 35, 5 at 42, and 6 at 51? Or maybe I've seen it start at 3 and it's 4 that it goes to at 25? I've noticed the limit but I guess it never really stuck out as being all that important. Anyway, is this topic's idea just asking for those lines to be moved forward so that you reach the higher limits earlier?

Here's something from the thread I linked earlier to put the impact of kill based influence gains into perspective: For a flat rate of 1 inf / kill with no exceptions, that would be 3,600 kills in ranks 1 to 5, 6,400 kills in ranks 6 to 9, 12,500 kills in ranks 10 to 14, 17,500 kills in ranks 15 to 19, 50,000 kills in ranks 20 to 29, 70,000 kills in ranks 30 to 39, and 90,000 kills in ranks 40 to 49. That's a grand total of 250,000 kills with the same companion to max out its influence starting from zero. (The scaled numbers above bring that total down to 49,866 kills.) Compare that to what it takes to complete the "1000 kills with this companion" achievements or the 250 kill rampages that are sometimes conquest objectives. I've hit the rampage target (or fallen just short of it) while running a planet's 8 heroics. So 1000 kills might take roughly 32 heroics' worth of grinding, 50k kills might take roughly 1,600 heroics' worth of grinding, and 250k kills might take roughly 8,000 heroics' worth of grinding. And then compare that to the 100s of points that story companions can earn from your conversations or from each gift you give them. (Up to a couple thousand points per gift with the right gifts and under the right conditions.) One single point per kill would be a pretty subtle addition, all things considered. (Making an exception for weak targets so that only silver and higher level enemies count would minimalize the impact even more.)

That doesn't sound right. The pattern over the last several months has been that Gree OR Rakghoul will occur each month and they will alternate with each other. Gree is going on right now, so Rakghoul should be expected next month, not next week. Let's see... Dulfy's page on conquests tends to be up to date and accurate with the upcoming schedule. As I understand it that schedule is typically datamined information but currently the page actually claims Hmm... Anyway, Dulfy has the next Rakghoul event starting on the last day of this month. Huh, interesting. On that reddit link posted above, follow the link on that page labeled Upcoming Galactic Conquests and that page shows the same list as what Dulfy's page has lined up for the rest of this month.

Yeah. Regular and "heroic" star fortress take place at different times and they're the beginning and end of a story arc. Part 1: The regular star fortress (regardless of which planet you select it as) is only about you sneaking in to find out how they work and it ends at a room that is locked down because of the remotely controlled defense systems on the planet's surface. Part 2: Then you've got the recruitment missions for the contacts on the 6 planets, with each one directing you into the bunker for that planet's remote defense system. Then after you've disabled those defenses you can choose that planet in "heroic" mode for part 3. Part 3: In "heroic" mode, the point of it is that you are sneaking in again now that you've taken steps in part 2 to insure that you are now capable of passing beyond that room where it had ended in part 1, however because of your activity in parts 1 and 2 they've beefed up security and the people guarding the place now are noticeably stronger. The heroic star fortress is intentionally designed to be tougher content than anything short of operations and hard mode flashpoints. (I think you could probably compare it to a hard mode flashpoint if there was one scaled for two players instead of four?) Grouping up for it is definitely one way to manage that difficulty. But it's set up in a place where you're meant to take some time to level up your four Alliance specialists and your favorite companion so that they can level the playing field and transform that tough challenge into something soloable. If you can improve your gear to 216s or better, that helps too. With high enough gear and a maxed out companion you may even consider trying for the achievement to complete the heroic star fortress solo AND without the Alliance buffs/abilities.

To back this up, after I got as far as I could on my first attempt (gave up on round 7 after countless deaths and a small fortune in repairs) Bowdaar was sitting at rank 6 and then after I gave it another try and managed to finish all 10 rounds Bowdaar was rank 13. If there had been some sort of hidden tracking system only allocating influence points once per each unique round completed it would have ended evenly on rank 10. (This was done with an annihilation marauder in a 208/216 mix (plus some 156 augments) with a rank 28 Nico healing.)