I have no answer for the BH otherwise than I just got through it, because it's my favourite class. In the case of my smuggler, the only thing that helped me was a comment I read on this forum, to the effect that they just kind of viewed the whole thing as a comedy. I can see why; the smuggler has some great lines in those expansions that had me laughing out loud more than once (not that I can remember them now, but still). My smuggler always struck me as perpetually amazed to be there and that was how I went with it. Not sure I would do it again, though.

Agreed. I am thoroughly sick of his white outfit, and my dark side characters usually kill him, making the other outfit impossible to get. There are loads of Arcanns around, and they all look exactly the same; just being able to change his armor would be great. From what I understand he's a "unique" body type--hence the problem--but even having the dark side outfit universally available would be nice.

Made me laugh, until I realized that this is exactly what the proposed changes to conquest look like. I await 6.0 with bated breath.

All of this, exactly.

I was just on Darth Malgus and there is definitely no double CXP.

Totally agree. Whenever I need to dump Theron (which I've done several times now, because I tend to feel sentimental toward my original LIs) my husband does the scene for me; he volunteers, he enjoys it so much. But having seen his characters dump Lana, I find the scene with her incredibly sad. She looks so hurt. It was a well-written and acted scene, I think.

Yep. Haven't been able to get back in after a few tries.

I think that's dead right. From a story standpoint I find what might come to pass quite fascinating, but no matter what happens, people are going to be deeply unhappy. Your LI and other companions don't care which faction you're with? Unrealistic and immersion-breaking. They do care and leave you? Give me my companions back! It's one thing if you know it's going to happen--for instance, anyone who starts a trooper now but previously played another one all the way through in the past will be aware of the Elara/Zakuul issue--but when we were originally given a choice to turn saboteur we were flying blind. Of course, we could have considered what might happen down the road, but that doesn't stop people feeling cheated. Or maybe people will be fine with it. I don't know if there was a hue and outcry when troopers lost Elara in Iokath for previous decisions. Up until now I've decided whether to turn saboteur or not with an eye both toward following the character's story arc, and whether or not I'm willing to lose certain companions. Hedging my bets, if you will. Hopefully more will become plain with 6.0.

*SPOILERS BELOW* I think there would have to be consequences with your LIs or else it would just be plain weird. In addition to the ones you mentioned above, I can't see Nadia sticking with the consular if he goes to the Empire. I also just can't imagine Theron would be okay with it in the long run; he hated Saresh, but overall he's a Republic man right down the line. And what about Dark Jaesa? No way she'd hang with the Republic--they won't let her kill everything in sight. Doc fought against the Empire on Balmorra so I wouldn't think he'd follow a saboteur JK to the enemy--same with Corso, who hated the Imps for supporting the Seps on Ord Mantell. Other LIs like Kaliyo (no morals whatsoever), Andronikos (although he did hate the Republic once), possibly Torian (he's more of a laid back surfer dude Mando), Mako, Vette, and Risha might not mind so much which faction their main squeeze is siding with. Maybe Lana, too. Or I could be totally wrong. Whatever the case, I do expect people will be losing LIs for their decisions--look at how they took Elara away if you blew up Zakuul.

Agree with this 100%.

I second all of the above. It would have been great to at least receive a letter from the vanilla LIs, but I accept that this was just supposed to be a bit of story to tide us over until 6.0. Hopefully something more will come along in the actual expansion. But, yeah, I hadn't really expected even this much story content, and I enjoyed it.

Thanks for this. I think I might actually semi-understand the basics now!

Good to know. When will the next Rakghoul event be then?

As my sniper will attest, Vector is an alliance alert now (the typical 2 minute type).

The assassins are definitely still there--whether they appear in your story just depends on which conversational choices you take when discussing how to lure Ashara into your trap. I've recently done the SI story twice and I've gone both routes (assassins and no assassins, I mean).

You did not get Doc and Quinn officially back during Chapter 9, although Theron shows up then. I think you're confusing Doc and Quinn's respective returns in the story with collecting companions from the terminal. Doc is back back in the story during Ossus and Quinn is back in the story in Iokath, both of which follow KOTET and KOTFE. I can only assume you didn't want to wait that long and collected them both from the terminal early, which you can do with any of the companions. That's fine and a legitimate thing to do, and you may have head canoned them as being there all along, but they weren't from the game's perspective. It was just a device to allow people to play with their favorite companions while they waited for the story to get around to bringing them back. Moreover, Lana does not abandon you when you leave Theron to die. She's back in Odessen afterwards and she's on Ossus as well. It may be that in the future there will be consequences with Lana for killing Theron, but they haven't happened yet. Otherwise we wouldn't have all those people complaining about the sunset walk with Lana at the beginning of Ossus. If your Lana is missing it's a bug and you should report it.

This interpretation of Lana's character is based on...? Because I've played the expansions through at least 10 times and I'm lost. And how on earth do you describe Quinn as supporting you during KOTFE, particularly since he first shows up after the vanilla game to support Acina in Iokath and isn't even in KOTFE or KOTET? Have I been playing a different game??

Great post by the OP. As someone who loves SHs and has spent a lot of money/time decorating, I'd be delighted to see most of the changes the OP mentioned incorporated into the game. I'd also like to emphasize that huge SHs are not always best. My favourite ones to decorate are the Coruscant and Dromund Kaas apartments because they are so much more reasonably sized; for that reason alone I would buy an extra one of each if I had the chance.

I've got two mercs and a gunnery commando myself, so we'll have to agree to disagree. And either way, the glitch happens in other instances, too, so I'd like it to be fixed.

Whenever my merc comes back down to earth after Death from Above, the cape on the Tempest Warden outfit flips forward to the front of my merc and stays that way until I put her on her speeder. Otherwise I have to switch her out of the outfit and then back into it. I've also had the cape flip forward at other times for reasons I haven't pinpointed yet, although when this happens the outfit will occasionally right itself. As I can't avoid using Death from Above (nor would I wish to), I would hope this could be fixed.

Totally agree. I like the Drifter outfit, but the clipping issue drives me mad. I wouldn't put it on another character for that reason.

Couldn't agree more (particularly re: a black version of Arcann's outfit w/out cybernetics). Given how popular Arcann and a lot of the Star Fortress companions are, they deserve some love.

I get that Arcann is a unique body type and that this is why we can't change his armour, but could we at least dye the armour set he has on? Although I never liked his set to begin with, I'd be much happier if I could make it a different colour. Or give us a choice of a few coloured armour sets from a vendor, if that would be easier. I love the dark side option but I can't give him that because all of my dark side characters kill him; thus he is only a companion for my light side characters. And I'm not going to nuke my light side alignment just to get Arcann's outfit--that seems unnecessarily excessive.

I think you missed my point about gearing alts; I already acknowledged I don't need the gear, it's just a fun goal. But it's not an argument worth having. Carry on.

As a "casual" player who still manages to play many, many hours of this game--in other words, I'm a solo player who doesn't raid or PvP--I agree with so much of what the OP says. I like gearing up, even though I have no "need" for high-level gear, and I want to be able to do so on my many alts. I of course expect that to take time; it was definitely hard work under the command crate system, but for the most part it felt fair enough. The current system is incredibly alt unfriendly, when my alts are what keep me in the game. I like playing a lot of different classes and I don't want to have to indefinitely bench certain characters in favour of others. I'm more than happy for the raiders and PvPers to have their pretty jet pack wings and special titles--they've earned them. I just don't want to be locked out of gearing my alts.