Hey folks sorry if this is in the wrong section. Please do what needs to be done if so. My group of pals and I went to do Directive 7 last night but our lvl 55 sage healer was "ineligible" when we spoke to the dude. Then, when he started the conversation the three of us were ineligible. The 3 of us were 47,48, and 49 btw and the four of us had not done the mission yet. We believe he had the hard mode missions so we couldn't join his and we had the regular story mission so he couldn't join. Eventually we just started the mission and he ended up loading in with us but for a good 15-20 mins we were trying to solve the issue. My question is why did this happen? Please forgive my ignorance

Yes, I suppose it's possible that since he has access to the hard mode option and you 3 do not yet, the "conversation" is not the same. I'm referring to the droid by the entrance whose only purpose is to set up the flashpoint instance, the one-time mission convo should be accessible to anyone who has not completed it already, so long as they have the minimum required level.

Yeah that'll be it, he had the HM mission and the rest had the SM mission. All he needed to do was delete the HM mission and select the SM one from the droid outside the instance, it does give you the choice when spoken to manually.

Thanks for the help fellas! Hopefully when we begin the next flashpoint we can avoid the problem.