why do people skip everything?

Here is a basic summary of a side quest in SWTOR.....

There is FAR too much of this in this game IMO. I give them credit for doing the work...a monumental task to be sure, but if it was me determining how missions would be put forth in the world....

1) Level cap would have been 40
2) Hoth would have been the last planet.
3) Act 2 would have been the end of your story....for now.
4) Over 2/3 of the planet side quests would not have existed, and instead XP would have been boosted for all planetary quests.
5) Dailies would have been set up on Tatooine, Quesh, Alderaan and Hoth.

Voss, Corellia, Belsavis and Illum would have come later with expansions, each adding 5 levels and more personal class stories...the content we have now. Dailies would have existed for each planet as well.

I would have launched with 12 flashpoints, Story and Hard modes, and added Nightmare modes with new planets.
PVP and Operations would have had what they have now, minus Tactical missions naturally at launch.

I personally think they went a bit overboard with VO on side quests, the amount of side quests, too many levels at launch, and gave away the entire story at launch...which I do not feel was a wise move. Instead, had they looked at the industry, they would have known that folks would burn through the class stories quickly.

Just my slant.

I played through everything on my first pubside toon and on my first Impside toon. Now that I have 22 total characters across 4 servers I have experianced everything the game has to offer many, many, many times. I skip because I have the Conv's memorized, I skip because I know that some mobs don't matter, I skip because I don't want to be in a FP for an hour when I know it can take 15 min and I can go do 2 more flashpoints while you are still clearing the entire flashpoint, listening to every convo and agonizing over every choice. I'm sure this holds true for many other players too. I have been playing SWTOR for 2 years I don't want to watch every single cut scene nor do I care to do the side missions that I have done many times before. Unless I know it is going to get me XP that I need because WZ's and FP's haven't been as fruitful on the new toon I'm leveling.
I skip because I can and because the side quests get boring after about the 3rd time through them.

Variety becomes repetition once you have done the same thing many times. After about a dozen trips through hammer station I no longer care for the story, I spacebar. If you are listening to the story then I take that as Bio Break time. Many of us have been through this stuff a hundred or more times and could care less about the story. Many of us know which side quests we like and which ones suck. Honestly I would skip all of Hoth if I could.

Some people only care about playing end-game and want to get to end-game as fast as possible. Not me, but there's a lot of people out there like that. Doesn't matter what the game is....they are power-levelers. This isn't a new concept or anything unique to this game.

I'm one of those players. 1-50(55) once was enough for me.

So it occurs to me, why doesn't some dev make an MMO with nothing but endgame-style content? Level 5 is max level, and the entire game is nothing but dailies, flashpoints, special events, and operations. Or just do away with levels entirely.

Would people actually play that?

RPGs and especially MMORPGs are designed to make your characters feel weak and inadequate...so that you are motivated to keep playing the game and get stronger. It's a good formula for addictive gameplay. But when it's too successful it backfires and causes players to race through the game blindly chasing rewards.

^ This... There's some quests that are badly written. Just accept it. I play all the planetary and bonus stories, b/c I need the comms. Otherwise, most of the truly enjoyable quests are either endgame, FPs, or class missions.

Thanks for explaining why power levelers... power level. The reason I feel the need to complete EVERYTHING, regardless of how many toons I have, is because I empathize with most quest givers and feel the need to help them. Aside from that it seems like everything's interconnected, especially starting on the last 3 planets. Corellia and Ilum are critical to the Empire's evolving state, Denova and Karagga are critical to the Makeb and Dread Masters story. I feel like if people skip everything they also miss how awesome it is how just about everything is connected because they're so focused on getting to lvl 55 and grinding ops and dailies.

Truth be told, from what I've seen over the years, people as a whole are not as invested in the story as they claim to be.

Not saying that they don't like or enjoy it but apart from a select few, I'm fairly sure most couldn't care less about the greater whole or how stuff comes together.

Might be because some of us have done every single quest 10-15-20 times before. I personally have 20 toons at level 55. there isn't a single quest in the game that I haven't seen at least twice.

If I choose to skip content, that's my business.

Now, that said, where I draw the line is in low level FPs (even KDY) when azzhats insist that everyone spacebar. If you are in BT/Ess chances are good that someone is there for the first time, let them enjoy it. The same applies to KDY if you see a 15 in your group. And seriously the conversation for KDY, only takes like 1 minute.