Basically I just wish "LOL, we're good, thanks; both of you just go do your own thing" had been a viable option.

Tyth is probably too sated from the PTS threads to miss this one

Permanent.

IMO: No it wouldn't. it would be dumb, just like the Darksaber arc was. Filoni is amazing, and I think Clone Wars/Rebels are up there with the best of Star Wars, but the whole Darksaber arc was (and still is) just bad. Kanan training Sabine up to even remotely close to Jedi-level saber skills? No.

Yeah exactly, that's what happened the last couple times

Ahh yeah, that's a good one. I should unlock it globally, I only have it unlocked on a few characters now in preferred.

Winding up the month before going back to preferred and more low key playing again, two days of sub time left in the month I resubbed to get 6.3. Just did the dance to make sure none of the alts are holding more than a million creds, tried to time all the GTN auctions to wind up in time (quadrupled my legacy creds in the month back, which was nice). Bought a few Compendiums from V1CT0RY and banked them, just in case. Trying to think if there's anything else I will need more than a million at a time for between now and 7.0, or if I am missing anything else to prep for preferred again. I feel like half the time I do this I miss something and regret it later. Oh yeah, forum *****posting, better get that in in time, lol. Anyone else have a list of stuff they go through when they do this? I've done it for years but still feel like I miss things.

You know, if people would actually watch the event on youtube, a lot of the confusion here would be avoided. They were pretty clear about how this was going to work. Take five minutes (seriously, it's only five minutes) and watch the Combat Styles section: where they clearly explain the tech versus force thing.

True. Imagine slogging through KotFE/KotET if this were just a random MMO.

I think he is wrong too, but mainly because I am certain he is underestimating the dev's ability to do far, far worse things to the game. I mean, they did 5.0. Top that!

I apologize if I came across as condescending or rude. But this seriously has been covered in the KotFE guides on all of the swtor sites exhaustively for two thirds of a decade now. This information is absolutely out there for you. All you need to do is complete the mission to get Yuun, "To Find A Findsman", when it becomes available in KotFE. And then you just need to play the story, and the Alliance Alerts will come in to get companions over time. And some of them will be old ones returning. Just from playing the story. As of this date I think all but one have been returned at various points in KotFE, KotET, the Traitor Arc, and Onslaught. Guides can necessarily be spoilery, but here's a few random examples for you: Here is an overall guide with a good KotFE section: https://swtorista.com/articles/swtor-companions-guide/ Here is a quick reference for when they all come back, including requirements: https://swtorista.com/articles/swtor-companion-recruitment-guide/ Here is another guide for when they all come back: https://vulkk.com/2016/12/06/swtor-companions-availability-list-swtor-5-0-guide/

Oh, don't get me wrong - I have no hope they would actually ever do it

I have been thinking about this recently and am doing a playthrough of the class missions now, and have been kind of keeping an eye out - trust me, there's *plenty* of dialogue they could just mine from the class stories to put together the companion phrases.

Where was it ever implied that you would be able to mix within an advanced class? I did not see that anywhere. All I saw, as was described by Charles and then repeated by others above: Each base class (for example, Jedi Knight) would be able to pick an Advanced Class from any of the advanced classes for either force or tech, depending on the base class (i.e. Sentinel OR Marauder (or Sorc or Assassin or...) in the JK example). NOWHERE was it implied that you could take, say, some things from Sentinel and some things from Marauder.

I am going to LMAO if this is not the case. The enraged backlash will be hilarious to sit back and watch, until they relent. Which they will have to do, otherwise people will ragequit in droves. Especially since light side Warrior and Inq are so well supported with dialogue and are common player choices (and great ways to play the storylines as well). The moment a Lightning Sorc player logs in and their character starts throwing pebbles - ouch Meanwhile expect the Jedi Order to start finding that a disturbing number of their Consulars are starting to enjoy their base passions with their ambiguously aged crew companions and are walking around mumbling things about about breaking chains.

Yet another reason for my (long wished for) feature request to let us use our alts as companions. At least that way there will still be a fun RP use of the surplus alts once this lands. Not to mention potentially making the Legacy tab actually mean something

If we even get that, yeah.

The impact of the choice on the game is, sadly, negligible. They kind of dropped it after a couple initial events and haven't really returned to it since. I don't even remember which of my toons went saboteur at this point. Bummer too, as it started out promising.

I am leveling a new character now and I just hit 75 on Belsavis. I could be running naked and still faceroll this content. That was with the XP boosts given by the class missions and a 40% DvL suit. Should be faster now during the double XP event. Plus, once you hit 75, you get gear wholesale and don't need to worry about mods, armorings and so on, unless you want to.

The best thing about SoR was the coalition - basically the Empire and Republic in an uneasy cooperation because something worse needed to be fought. That was brilliant, it moved beyond the tired old Black/White Good vs Evil boring paladinesque SF tropes that a lot of space games focus on. I was glad it continued; I was just unhappy with the KotFEET mechanism of continuing it.

An example of the agency referred to above - while in the class missions your choices may not affect the entire story in general, in the short term it *feels* like you have a lot of choice. Which planets to go to in which order (whether the class story itself branches or not), whether to do or put off the bonus cycles, the optional flashpoints, etc. There's just a lot of choice in what to do that is baked in and inherent in the overall experience. That's more or less eliminated by KotFEET, gradually declining over time for everything post-Corellia, starting with Ilum. Onslaught is a little better than KotFEET, agreed. But even then a lot of the coices you make don't *feel* consequential. And the ones that do (i.e. the Saboteur choice earlier on) are then dropped on the floor because really they don't make much difference now, long OR short term. So what this adds up to is the game went from feeling very open with vast possibility, to feeling constrained and on rails, with little agency for the player.

Yeah. With a healing companion you don't even need to equip gear at all (besides a mainhand weapon, which can be L1) to go 1-75. It's not exactly difficult. You do it for the story and the facerolling power fantasy, not for the challenge

They have always added new abilities (or utility slots) on top in the past.

I find it kind of funny that you "cannot find a straight answer" to something that has been a central game mechanic since October 2015 and was exhaustively covered on literally all of the SWTOR sites over the years.

Years ago, just after 5.0 dropped, someone made an excellent forum post that hit the nail on the head. I probably won't do it justice here but it went something like this: Ever since Ilum, it's felt like our agency as players in the SWTOR world is getting smaller and smaller over time. Starting out in the class stories, the expanse of content was truly impressive. Each class played through the same planets and the same galactic events, but each with their own point of view. It was, basically, like eight mini-KotORs, occurring contemporaneously and seeing the same overarching events from lots of different angles, and each with their own personal storyline through it in addition to faction-specific stories. It was amazing. You felt like there was tons to do and explore and that as a player there were many paths to take. Ilum reduced that a bit to being mostly the faction specific stories with some class flavor. Makeb, the same; a bit more constrained, a bit less agency for choosing how you wanted to play. SoR, again, the same. At this point it's just the faction stories with a few extra lines for Warrior and JK. And the factions join and work together. But in a cool way! And yet, it's still feeling *smaller*. Ziost was a brief exception, actually interesting as it had some serious flavor to it (especially for JK and SW). But then KotFEET landed and reduced our agency as players dramatically, even from SoR. What had started as eight disparate storylines and a really interesting set of takes on the game universe was now, finally, reduced down to a single linear story with few meaningful branches. Our agency as characters was essentially reduced to making a few companion choices. The story itself was on rails and basically a long, linear cutscene. The world felt, again, smaller. And it's continued that way since. Sure, there's the Saboteur thing, but even that has made little difference in the story, or more importantly, our ability to interact with the story differently across classes. The player's agency and the worldbuilding itself are now feeling very small indeed.