I've got a fever. . .

I love a lot of abilities for different occasions. One of the things I loathe most about many of the newer MMOs is forcing you to choose just 6 or 7 abilities under the guise of "importance of choice" which just ends up in seven abilities that are the best and the rest are useless. As far as equipment goes, my wife is a clicker, and she's extremely competitive as a player. It's a learning curve, but that's a good thing. I also don't use any kind of macro.

They're setting up the backstory visually for the main villain which we were only told about in game. So, this is giving you some insight into what really happened to turn Vaylin to what she is now, and why Senya acted as she did with Arcann; because he was the only child left she hadn't lost, so, she did what she felt she had to for her family. Since Vaylin is now ostensibly the main "bad guy", they're setting her personality up more by giving a little insight as to how she became the Vaylin we know now. It's just backstory to get you a little more emotionally involved in the plot. If you don't like KotFE, though, it's not going to mean anything to you. That being the case, and the direction this game is going, I'm not certain why anyone that felt that way would still be wasting time here.

Understood. I'm just spitballing here, because the current system provides a lot more rote and boredom than it does a mild challenge. Personally, I'd prefer if they went back to the "nerfed" companions. There's nothing wrong with a "little" challenge. That said, I was looking for a please-all option by having different companion skill levels. I guess it's dependent on whether or not they would like to provide that service. If they do, they'll do the testing necessary. If not, then they won't. Since we're dealing with a large corporation, I would think the path of least resistance/most money would be their choice, which means one way, and probably the current way. That's too bad. I left LotRO awhile back after playing for years because they made the game laughably easy. I don't necessarily need an elite challenge where if I make one mistake I have to start all over again, but as it stands now, I can very easily recover from multiple mistakes in an encounter. That is not fun for many gamers. Part of the reason we game is for a challenge. All gaming has been about some kind of a challenge. It's not just play, it's gaming, gamesmanship, strategy, overcoming things. When you remove all that, it's just silly play. Sure, it's recreational in the first place, but most folks want to game, have a bit of a challenge, relish that moment when you accomplish something; and that doesn't need to be at the highest level of difficulty, but when there is no difficulty, it's no longer gaming, it's just sort of Slingo/killing time.

Knights of the Fallen Empire is very much the same (with very limited changes) for all classes.

This makes sense to me, but since they have their current game tuning, it would be interesting to see if they could keep the tuning, but add a change in companion strength that I suggested. I would think that if "normal" were the current relatively overpowered companion with the performance of the mobs staying as is, then if you just gave an option to drop the companion strength to pre-god level then it might achieve what both sides want.

^ is absolutely true, particularly the poison room on Makeb.

I've only experienced this on the Empire side, and particularly with my Sith Assassin.

They're all soloable now.

How about this solution. Have a check box on the companion screen that allows one to either run with companions at 4.0 strength, or the nerfed/original strength? Also, and this is much more of a redo on the coding part, they could make it so influence affects the companion's gear by percentage of your own gear, meaning that when they reach 50 influence rank their gear level would match your own. This would have to be balanced with the current buffage though, so I'd think I'd prefer Option 1 up there. If I could run with my companion being what it was after the nerf, that would give me a little more of a challenge, but it would leave in the public option to have the higher-powered companions as well. Perhaps a blending of the two ideas? It's a start at least.

A new mount for anyone that has had the "." in their sig since "the vanishing" and understands the significance. Long live .

Flying my Pike, I tend to use EMPs more for the engine-killing ability, but during Domination matches, I will throw them in there to mined-up satellites. Really though, that is only useful if you've got a couple folks willing to get in there and make a quick strafing run while I stay out at range and try to get a proton lock on the bomber. The EMP missiles could pack a bit more punch, but you don't want to give them too much utility. I'd think the punch I'd prefer would be more reliable drone lockdown. It doesn't have to be a huge amount of time, perhaps an accuracy debuff, or, something.

I'll chime in on the skill gap as opposed to the gear gap. I've been playing on my alts lately at certain points in the day as to not bring my mastered strike against newer folks. I have noted an appreciable difference in my numbers from when I first started back when it was opened up for us (early access) and starting with a new ship now. In a stock novadive I managed 4 kills and 11 assists in my second match on a alt, this in a domination match. I sucked, sucked terribly when I first started, but I got better. Now, here's the thing that's awful for the new folks. When I started it wasn't a bunch of folks with experience, with the exception of the test server pilots who did very well out of the gate. This is obviously going to be frustrating as hell for new folks. In groups I've been in, we've really done our best to let lesser-skilled folks get a handle on the game. There are many times that I've killed someone once that was flying in a straight line and obviously didn't know some of the nuances of the game that I let go the second time so they didn't get only 20 seconds of playing time between deaths. Not a very kill-em-all mentality, but I'm more interested in the preservation of the quality of the game going forward. I don't begrudge folks that kill anything, regardless of skill, though. It's going to be a tough go for the new folks, and it's going to drive people off, because the matchmaking system does not work due to low overall numbers, in my estimation, or from what I've experienced. The best advice I can give you is to talk in /2 PVP to starfighter veterans and see if they can give you tips, or even group with them so you can have some kind of advantage. It's extremely difficult to fly alone, and considering that many folks are on Teamspeak, Mumble, Ventrillo, etc., you are at a disadvantage to those folks regardless of skill if you're out there on your own. If anyone is on Ebon Hawk (Republic) and needs advice, we all talk it up on the PVP channel when someone asks anything. There are more than enough opinions there to go around, and there are some damn fine pilots as well. Just ask, we'll answer

It's upgrades. You can use blaster overcharge along with burst lasers to really do some exquisite damage up close. There are other copilot abilities that really help your offensive capabilities. Hit ctrl-P, Starfighter tab and click to enable the detailed tooltips. Go look around your hangar at both the components as well as copilots. If you take some time, you can figure out which will be best for what you want to do and you can get to building your ship the way you like. There are a lot of combinations for each ship type, and different ships do different things in each type. Look around there and you'll start getting a better feel for what stuff does as it levels and how you want to build. The most-important thing is to build something you'll be effective flying, not something someone else has made their living on.

When you first start out it is very tough. You're going to take your lumps as you figure out how to pilot well, how to turn without overturning in a dogfight, and getting the aiming procedure down. To fire a missile, you have to have the target inside the circular firing arc (outer circle) and hold down the right button. It will beep. beep, beep as four arrows (top, bottom, left and right) close in on your target. You will get a louder beep/tone when it has locked and the target box will become all red and the arrows will no longer be moving in, but locked on. This is when you release the right mouse button to fire. You must keep the person in your firing arc the entire lock-on time, and remember they have ways to break your lock. This means you will have to repeat the entire process again. Also, there are many skilled pilots who wait for you to fire your missile and then can boost away without using a missile break engine ability. Keep at it, try to ask questions from people online (we talk about Starfighter a lot in /2 PVP on Ebon Hawk), get your daily/weekly missions for GSF from the PVP mission terminal, and you will improve. It just takes time to get the learning curve down. Also, you can try dulfy.net for starfighter builds and the like.