Mate, you're overthinking this. If the "helpless pugs", as you said, keep facing the same people over and over again and they continue to enter the queue, getting slaughtered each time, they deserve it. You need to know when to quit.

Actually, I believe the republic storyline takes place before the imperial one. The warden the imperials talk with is a deputy of the warden the pubs talk with. Also, at the end of the imperial story you have the option to kill the warden. If he's left alive he would surely mention his encounter with the Dread masters to someone, our character or general Skylast. I think the knight, the warrior and the inquisitor story take place at roughly the same time. Satele Shan's fleet attacks Dromund Kaas as a distraction for the ground assault of the knight and his team. Protecting their capital should be a priority for the Wrath, Baras and the Dark Council. Generally though, I think the planetary stories take place at the same time for both factions with the exceptions of Alderaan, Voss, Belsavis and Corellia. Alderaan and Voss have the same finale for everyone so I think the canon version of what happened there would be up to the player. Belsavis is sabotaged by the imps first, which starts the republic story and after it ends begins the imperial one. Corellia is conquered by the imps, then liberated by the pubs. The class stories, they're a whole other thing but I do not believe the time gap between them is big.

Faced a 6 man premade the other day on Alderaan (I assume it was a regular 4 man + 2 entering the queue at the same time). We won that without too much of a sweat. Faced a premade on Ancient Hypergates that always capped both pylons at the start. Took our team a solid minute to take ours back, but we did it, even had both in one of the rounds. We had more than 5 quitters in that match btw. I also remember one time on Denova where we were getting nowhere and at 5 or so percent we managed to turn the fight and win. Kept running between turrets and managed to cap theirs just when they were capping one of ours. I suppose many of the people in this thread don't have such stories to share. I stay in an absolutely lost match out of respect for my teammates, even if they are braindead. Losing is part of the game, if you get teamed up with the same noobs again and again or if you face the same fotm premade match after match, don't ragequit in the middle of it. Take a break after the match ends, clear your head. I've found that helps me a lot. I'm actually surprised there are so many entitled people here with the "I pay for this, I can do whatever I want" attitude. What about the other people in your team? Or you're allowed to screw them because you give 15 bucks a month? If you're having that much trouble with solo queue, find yourself a pvp guild and do stuff together. The pros outweigh the cons imo.

It seems I clearly had no idea what skill level you guys had when I wrote my stuff. I guess that if you haven't done any group related content prior to TEC, it's gonna be a nightmare, especially the later rounds. I wasn't trying to brag or to put down anybody so I do apologize to anyone that took it that way. I was just expressing a disbelief at how someone can spend the amount of time some people here did but when I look at it from a new player's point of view it starts to make sense. Perhaps it's been too long since my noobish days of trying an operation for the first time without even reading a guide (yes, I did that, because there are story spoilers in guides). If the problem with save points is that massive, I'm sure Bio will add it as a functionality. If not, well in theory every class should be able to complete it, hence the class achievements, so I guess you're stuck with reading guides and trying different tactics until then.

Most of the story arc encounters were never hard to begin with, even when companions were crap and you had to gear them. The ones I struggled with as far as I remember were Tatooine jedi knight final boss on my sent with kira and the class story final bosses of the trooper, knight, warrior and inquisitor story. As far as I know the tactics there haven't been removed, but the improved companions and bolster help quite a lot. If any of the new players have bothered to do a solo flashpoint, they probably know that colored circles and stuff on the ground in general = bad, you have to reposition yourself from time to time and using an interrupt here and there could be useful. Examples - plasma probes at Commander Ghulil in Black Talon, lightning aoe attacks at Vokk in The Esseles, random AoE and channeled attack at PD-44 in Taral V, uninterruptible melee AoE at The Foundry Guardian in The Foundry and many, many more. Ok man, are we talking about new players or braindead players? I am pretty much a FPS player, the only RPGs I've played before this game were the two KotOR games. Yet I read what my abilities did, I read what my class stat is, I read what secondary stats to use for my role and which abilities to use rarely or not use at all because they were not helping me and were not part of my rotation. I have no problem with explaining tactics to new players, I do that even in flashpoints. I've spent hours pugging different HM operations, suffering wipe after wipe, but I stuck around and I wasn't that aggressive at the end. The problem is, no one tells he's new. We wipe once or twice, I ask them why are they doing x action and only after this they say "sorry, i'm new" or "i've never been here before". Okay, I've read about people initiating a kickvote because someone said he's new but I'd like to believe such people are extremely rare. IMO the problem isn't in the lack of help from the veterans, it's in the apathy of the newcomers. I think I've seen more people blame experienced players for turning down and/or mocking new ones than the actual elitists. My "goal" wasn't to alienate people from new content, although if you turn down something so easy that you're better off not doing it at all, you'll only get frustrated. It's not my fault you can't read tooltips and can't react to a changing environment fast enough. I was trying to explain why I think it's a waste of resources to add additional functionality where it's not needed.

I just did it on my tactics vanguard, 216 set bonus augmented, for the first time ever. Had M1-47 at level 27 dpsing for the first 4 rounds, then I switched him to heal. The only problem I had was with the Old World Muscle, died twice there. Everything else was a one shot. Took me about half an hour with waiting for cooldowns before each encounter and reading the console tooltips. There were a couple of interesting mechanics here and there but most of them fall under the don't-stand-in-colors category. You guys must be the kings of casuals if you're having such a hard time with it.

Just because you feel that way doesn't mean the majority does too. I'm sure Bioware have data about this kind of stuff somewhere and I bet they're planning their moves according to it. Then again, the reason for the lack of checkpoints can be purely technical. Someone mentioned flashpoints remember your progress - true, but you can't use group finder until you reset the phase (or so I think, haven't actually tried it) and you can't enter one flashpoint, clear half the bosses, exit then enter another one and clear half the bosses there too. You'll get messages about conflicting phases the second you try to enter another flashpoint. I'm assuming TEC doesn't have a progress remembrance system like flashpoints do because it doesn't exactly fall under the flashpoint category. I don't know if it's because group finder based content just works that way or they haven't put in the effort in TEC. The second checkpoint system that someone mentioned, the one with the lockouts, will work pretty much as in operations - once you beat a boss, you will be able to beat him again after the weekly reset. Why do I say weekly reset and not daily reset? Because there isn't a phased boss in the game that has a daily reset and even though you think it's not hard to code, that may not be the case. We are talking about Bioware here. I am not an expert in programming but they have needed a remarkably long time for fixing bugs that seem easy to repair (companions not having unified gear in cutscenes for example, which is still not completely fixed but you can use a dye module to make it work).

Mate, did you even read what I wrote or you just re-paraphrased your previous post? The lack of checkpoints is supposed to increase the amount of time you spend on it. An experienced progression player won't have problems while doing the championship, but a casual player is very likely to have to try again and again, every time from the start. The amount of time someone is willing to put into this varies, of course, but adding a checkpoint will lower that time substantially. That's good for the players, but not good for the company. If people clear content fast, they'll demand more. If Bio can't deliver, the players will either be inactive or switch to another game. That means the population will decrease which affects pretty much everything - gsf, pvp, flashpoints, gf ops runs, heck even full group heroic runs. Do you see the pattern here? Also, having a checkpoint while having connection problems will make no difference. You will keep getting the lag spikes and you will keep getting killed. Having a checkpoint will only increase your repair bill because it will allow you to get killed more times by the same mechanic.

As I clearly wrote, there is a chance you will come back at a later time, when you feel you are better geared. The way I see it, the current system guarantees more playthroughs just because of that - you don't have checkpoints, so you gotta spend more time on it meaning you spend more time online. Eventually, this can factor in subscription numbers. Having checkpoints will surely be a big advantage to casuals but then the content will be cleared too fast. P.S. I say again, this is all my point of view on the matter, doesn't mean it's really happening.

Even entering the queue with a random premade gives you an unfair advantage over the other team. I assume you guys don't do warzones with pve gear. So having 4 geared people with enough brains to call incs and not chase kills around the map is an advantage in my books. But if you are not running fotm classes all the time (2 madness sorcs, 2 heal sorcs for example) then it's all right. In the end, you can't please everybody. You're either gonna take the fun out of friends that play together, like you and your mates, or you're gonna take the fun out of the solo player. So you just make the best of what you have and try to enjoy it.

What you guys fail to see is that this will cater to the casuals too much. Okay, you're gonna get your checkpoint. You're gonna play a little, get tired/bored/whatever, log off and continue right where you stopped after some time. Eventually, you're gonna beat the last boss. And then what? The rewards are not good enough to run it again and again and again. Answer me honestly, if you are not planning on doing a speed run (which some people said they are not) are you going to come back to do the same content? You're probably going to do it once on 2, maybe 3 characters and then forget it ever existed. The way it is now guarantees more playthroughs. Even if you reach a point where you can't beat a boss no matter what and you decide to drop it completely, there's still a chance you're gonna come back later on when you have better gear and a higher influenced companion. I very much doubt you need full 224 min/maxed augmented gear and a level 50 companion to get past the bosses for the speed run achievement so the fact that you guys are spending hours on some bosses means you either have crap gear, fail at reading tooltips or you are too slow to react which all falls under the "git gut" category for me.

The whole championship takes half an hour to complete, with all the sightseeing and getting killed once or twice at each boss. How about you fellas git gud and stop complaining about stuff that isn't worth complaining? Seriously, this can be considered the hardest content for casuals right now and yet it's not even on pre-4.0 sm ops content level in terms of tactics. I saw some people hint that they can't beat a certain boss for an extended period of time up to the point where they ragequit and I'm like ".......". I simply find statements like these laughable. The second Bio adds a fight that is more than just a braindead hack'n'slash encounter, people find a reason to whine about. "Oh, but it's too hard, why don't you add more kolto stations?" "Oh, but it doesn't save my progress, Biofail are at it again". If you suck so hard then maybe you should spare more time on it, not try to squeeze as much as possible right before you head to work or whatever.

I admit, this will definitely hinder the vanguards/powertechs ability to take out ranged with escapes but it's not that much of a game changer.

Have you even played a sorc heal? You can run out of force if you spam dark heal only.

That. Was. AMAZING! How have I not seen this in all my years of browsing dank memes?

This isn't a nerf, it will only make sorcs/sages worry about their resources after a minute and a half or so of nonstop healing.

Worry about rotation when you near level 60. For now, set up a priority on your abilities - use the ones that give your target a debuff or the ones that buff you first. Check your skill tree from time to time, see what passives you gain along the way and change your priority abilities accordingly.

Lol, I guess those 100 vanguards/pts with 1600+ solo rating are all tanks then.

Coding is harder than people believe it is, you don't just write showNumberOfPeopleInQueue_Ranked = 1 and get stuff done. Really? It has absolutely nothing to do with it? Tell me then, if ranked popped so often for OP, why would he bother to make this thread? Also, the part about the fleet being empty - are you trying so hard to be a white knight that you can't put two and two together? Ranked doesn't pop => low ranked population => low server population. Inb4r "but maybe he's on a PvE server" - TRE is a PvE server and pops are rarely over 5 minutes. Nah mate, it's annoying because people like you keep defending unnecessary threads like this one. What difference will it make if you know that at 14:00 you're the only one in the queue or that at 20:00, with only one instance on the fleet, there are 5 people in it, including you? Is it so hard to draw a conclusion? If people can't spend 10 minutes waiting, you're better off without them anyway. P.S. They have already written the code for hood toggle too, just try putting anything with a hood on a twi'lek or a togruta. Still, do you see a hood toggle option somewhere?

First of all, you guys are assuming that's it's going to be easy to code without even having an idea about how the game's code works (I would argue that you have no idea how coding works in general but that's another thing). And second, prime time of TRE you have to wait no more than 5 minutes for a ranked pop. If you got 70 people online on the fleet during prime time, it's very likely ranked is not gonna pop a lot.

I think I felt the lack of different writing for different classes here the most. My trooper would definitely side with Jorgan but there wasn't an option to do that. I am headcannoning not taking it all out on Kaliyo for the sake of keeping the alliance. The commander taking sides is not healthy imo.

Phase walk -> stealth out -> h2f. Or Stealth out -> stealth cc -> h2f. About the cc immunity - guess I just use my stuns always at the wrong time then. Dunno mate, with the set bonus buff for heatseeker missiles and supercharged cell you got plenty of burst. Only that my slinger gets his cc immunity every minute, not minute and a half. Maybe it's because I've used a utility point somewhere, dunno. And with the amount of knockbacks, roots, slows and escapes they have, the cc immunity goes slightly over the top. Btw you can easily nuke anyone, maybe except tanks, so that doesn't say much. How exactly are you going to shut down someone who doesn't even have a proper rotation? Sure, you have aegis assault, retaliation and crushing blow, which are almost always a priority, but that's not a rotation. You can shut down a lightning sorc, carnage mara or a gunnery mando (less likely, but doable) but shut down a jugg? I'm genuinely curious.

I haven't played every tree in the game, but I have faced enough of them in warzones so I can give my 2 cents on the subject at least. Operatives/scoundrels: Lolroll needs a longer cd. That's it. Haven't noticed dps operatives healing themselves that much so I don't think a nerf is needed there but lolroll is definitely a game breaker, especially if you're in Huttball. Make it only one roll every 10 seconds and I'll be happy. Vanguards/powertechs: Don't think pyro/plasma needs a nerf, I mean they got nerfed already in 4.0. Tactics/whatever the imp equivalent is called needs less burst though. Shoulder missiles + battle focus + your opener can global anyone. Hell, you can shave 60-70% of your opponents hp with just two abilities. Maybe increase the refresh rate of HiB or lower the number of energy lodes you can stack. Haven't played a tank long enough to make a proper judgment. Shadows/assassins: CC immunity, y u so long? It's not enough that they can zap back 50 meters away from the fight and h2f, but they get 10 seconds of immunity to everything. Lower it to 6 at least. Sentinels/marauders: The biggest burster, combat/carnage, can be shut down easily enough if you play carefully. Anni/watchman are THE dot class without being too OP. Smashers (they'll always be smashers for me for reasons best left in the past) - not too bursty, yet they can still put pressure on the heal and are pretty capable 1vs1 fighters. Defensives cds are alright. Maybe bring back the 50% hp loss on guarded by the force/undying rage for the lulz. Commando/mercenary: I think that's the only class that, if properly played, can posses a real danger in 1vs1 versus a sorc/sage heal. Haven't played innovative ordnance but if it's burst is anything like arsenal, then the class doesn't need a nerf. The lack of defenses compensates for the huge burst. Sorcerer/sage: Ah, my favorite healers. They got so much mobility that I dunno why they're even called a ranged class. Remove the instacast on dark heal and phase walk and then we'll see. Juggernaut/guardian: I pvp a lot with my jugg tank and I can honestly say no one can beat me 1vs1 when I have everything off cd. Well, maybe except scoundrels but at least it's gonna take a lot of time to take me down. I think the main reason for that is enraged defense. Either less charges or less heal per charge can fix this. Think that's universal for all 3 trees. Gunslinger/Sniper: Besides entrench being seriously OP (1 minute cd, 20 secs of cc immunity, come on) I think they are fine right now. Dude, I'm sorry but... have you even played a jugg tank? I can kill two people by myself if I have all my cooldowns up. I can hold 8 people at one node for a solid 20 seconds, heck, I can even take one guy out.

True, the massassi were the warrior caste in the hierarchy of the sith empire of old. A good example for a pure sith is Ludo Kreshh. I think Naga Sadow is a pureblood i.e. sith-human hybrid. The SI actually starts as a slave in the story (even if you make a pureblood, think you were a child of exiles or something like that) so it makes sense for them to be twi'lek, rattattaki or zabrak. The only thing I didn't understand is why a SW could be a zabrak originally (didn't stop me from making a Darth Maul rip-off ).

I hope we get a scene where all the mandos are chanting "Mandalore! Mandalore!". Not to us of course, that would be silly.