"Story flags" are a technical nightmare; I recall a lot of out of cycle 4.x patches having to do with messed up story flags. I still have a character with 2 copies of the imp ship droid because of one of those. And that's just on the back end. On the front end, there's no interface existing to "Set flags" - they'd have to build one and keep it maintained. This is all effort that would take away from new content. It's not worth it to implement. Even if it was possible, which I have my doubts about.

I was playing EA games on a Commodore 64 in the mid-eighties, and Wikipedia says they were founded in 1982. Past performance no indication of future gains, but at the same time, they've been around the block a time or two. Also, reading the Wiki article, they " purchased VG Holding Corp, the parent company of BioWare and Pandemic Studios" in late 2007 (october-november). So BW has been assimilated for a long time.

I stand corrected - I use him when forced to; I'm not sure I've ever opened his character sheet. That's important, though, because he can have his head hidden and carries a Blaster Rifle. I specifically excluded the CM companions - none can wear gear (being either droids or beasts). I completely forgot about that; another comp I never use. At any rate, excluded for not being able to hide head. Though, does pre-KotFE (Sgt) Rusk change weapons as well?

Are there even Nautolans of all 8 body types in the NPC library? I'd have to really rack my brain to remember 8 different "foreground" nautolan NPCs - there's a Jedi or two, a trooper, that dancer on Coruscant and her husband, the one that works for SCORPIO on Zakuul, and the Nar Shadaa Star Fort companion...

You can pull the rejected companion from the return terminal. I did it in a moment of madness on a couple of characters

It's Twitch's premium service, but if you have Amazon Prime it's a perk of that.

I was going to ask if you couldn't just build out a KotFE/KotET comp (alliance alert or main character), but the options there for certain combos are somewhat slim. From this point forth I'm only going to discuss "generally available" options who can be given gear, not class-locked ones (even if they are available to more than one class), and not ones without gear slots (lets out the Star Fortress companions). The only male force users are both "can't hide head" (Gus and Xalek), and there's no male dual saber wielders at all. Over on the distaff side, unless you got Master Ranos (only time based) or Darth Hexid (I think you can achieve her now?) you have Lana only as a force user. At least if you did get the other two, you have all three saber choices (but IIRC none of them can wield a vibroblade for some reason). On the tech side, no characters have an assault cannon, and the only male characters with a blaster rifle are "can't hide head slot." (Koth Vortena is not customizable, I don't think?) There's plenty of male sniper rifle wielders, and at least one male and one female dual pistol wielders.

I yield the point, then. OTOH, how many different Nautolan heads are actually in-game right now? There's a certain amount of complaints about the lack of Cathar options, and maybe Togruta as well, on the forums. If there's basically 20 total NAutolan options at launch, there will be forum salt . This one is not a big bar to cross, but it is there.

Has anyone tried to skip chapters using the chapter picker interface? I guess I wouldn't expect it to work, or to bug out, but I wonder what would happen.

As a player whose done maybe a handful of ops and only dabbles in PvP, I'd been unable to get top gear, or indeed any endgame PvE gear, until 5.x; this is a pretty weak argument. The PvP guys, who get almost no credits for their activities, have a better complaint. But story drops credits, and grants comps. And crafting is basically no effort.

It's "away from SWTOR," at any rate.

I didn't even think about the possibility that GC would have to be either interrupted or reset. Once GC was put it, that was it for level cap increases, not without a 4.x level change of the basic rules of the game.

Observation - none of the Star Fortress Companions can wear gear, they can only have customizations applied to them. One of the SF companions is a Nautolan. The rest are obviously non-standard body types ( Suspicion: Nautolans are not as easy to fit to the PC body types as people suspect. Among other things, the tentacles are going to clip terribly - though this is also a problem with Togrutas and Twi'lek. Carry on.

It's not just me, hunh? Oddly, the first time I went to jail last night my comp remained summoned, but not the second. The stupid thing is I had plenty of time to summon the first time, but not the second! This is most problematic on the Skytrooper Construction Floor.

Since they noted in the 5.10 preview that they (finally) are scaling KotFE+ up to 70 for rewards and threat, I really don't expect them to do all that work again in a couple more months. Plus, level sync is already getting a workout to make lower level content "relevant" to level-cap players. If gear is going up a tier or maybe 2 by 6.0, and player stats go up as well? That's a big jump. Plus, all the feathers ruffled as they maybe add 1 more skill and one more talent and have to then spread skill and talent acquisition across 75 levels instead of 70. That's been a constant sore point since 4.x - the "regrinding levels to get abilities back." As I said in the other thread, I could see them adding 5 levels if they move set bonus into the classes and remove it from new-drop gear (2-piece at 71, 4-piece at 73, 6-piece at 75; old sets continue to function). But otherwise, too much work, too little gain. But I've been wrong before and clearly the studio thinks people should grind something level-like. If they're dropping Galactic Command, then increasing level cap is the only way to do that...

Comps should be identical in performance. That having been said, story comps should never have been subscriber exclusive rewards. I rather like what they appear to have done for Darth Hexid, which is make her available through achievement with a much heftier accomplishment than doing her original requirements.

Set bonus should be part of inherent character progression, because endgame activities are balanced against the character's abilities including set bonus. It's another set of passive skills, just like the ones acquired through leveling. If there were more than one set of set bonuses, you could argue that leaving it outside of the inherent class progression for players to be able to customize their character to their play taste and I would say that's a reasonable argument, but that hasn't been the case for BiS in my association with the game. About the only way I'd accept a level cap increase as more than an illusionary treadmill at this point is if the studio said "Tier 5 has no set bonus armorings, instead you earn your 2x set bonus at 71, your 4x set bonus at 73, your 6x set bonus at 75. Existing armor still grants you its inherent set bonus if you don't have a level-based one, but they don't stack. In tier 5, the higher quality gear gives you a bigger stat budget and a more efficient stat allocation. Set Bonus Armor no longer drops from command crates obtained after this change." If they do this, I won't need to heat my house for the winter, I just need to leave a tab open to the forums and let the heat of the Forum Rage do the job, of course.

I don't expect a level cap increase. I mean, I won't die on that hill, but I don't expect it. Too many things would have to be done to support a level cap increase.

I generally decline random group invites reflexively, but on Possessed Hunters, I'll accept more often than not. If I'm in a position where I'm grabbing 5 minutes here, 5 there, I'll follow a reject up with , "sorry, randomly AFKing, can't group"

I put over a million credits into my legacy bank after 2 days running Coruscant, DK, Coruscant, Rep Taris (the second two in a group 4-strong, admittedly). I've probably spent a couple of million in the last week on the GTN and my legacy bank balance is still over a million; and I haven't even been concentrating on heroics; too busy doing Iokath daily/weekly for conquest (a nice chunk of change from the individual and guild rewards there) and HSF. And I haven't really been playing but maybe an hour a weeknight and a couple hours each weekend day. I haven't been keeping close track of my numbers, but I suppose I ought to get some actual numbers together if I'm going to keep arguing this point from this angle.

I subscribed to get the GSF early bird rewards, so I missed it by a bit. By the time I got to level cap, it was 55 (but I *think* I started before they raised it). I'll spare my rant on why set bonus tied to gear is one of the worst things ever.

GC was the best thing that happened for me because it meant I could finally get access to set bonus gear. But as the only way for anyone to get gear it was terrible; and should have never been put in like that.

One of the reasons Ben Irving is no longer "in charge" of SWTOR is rumored to have been his championing of the pure-RNG-crate gearing approach. It's only a rumor because, if that's what happened, he "failed upwards" and is on the Anthem team now. Keith Kannig did a LOT of damage control activities (and good for him for doing so) when he became Lead Producer.

In 4.x,the purpose and goal of heroics was changed from "group content" to "primary credit fountain" and "more difficult solo content." There was some official statements to the effect that H2 meant "PC and companion" now. Some heroics were redesigned to support this (Looking at you Aurora Cannon).

Using the Master's Datacron to skip those 10 levels seems an extravagant use of CCs (your own or someone else's). Admittedly, I own a suit of the Fast Level armor that was a DvL reward, but still...