11 months ago. I just checked and the Voss update (with the flashpoint) came out June of last year. Are you really sure you want a GSF update? You could end up looking at the GSF equivalent of 7.0's gutting of our combat styles.

Problem is that you want to companions to be strong, but still weaker than another player. Grouping up should be better than running solo (or duo) with companion(s).

Parsely will probably have 344 gear now. That's with tacticals, legendary implants, and augments. Athough even in basic 324, no tactical, no legendary implants pretty much every combat style is capable of hitting 15k plus. Get a tactical and legendary implants, half-decent stats, and you should be hitting 20k. Aim for 25k, with 330 plus gear, tacticals, legendary implants and augments (blue are fine). That's just ballpark though, check the parsely average for you combat style. Keep in mind that dummy parses are only a guideline and top dummy parses don't always match up with actual raid performance. (30k plus is the endgoal, but 25k plus is more than fine for the majority of HM raids).

That's why there's no way to know for sure what the changes will do until I can see how it looks with my settings on the PTS. It's just that by the time things hit the PTS they don't get changed before they go live. PTS is bug testing only. I just want the dev's to realize that some players value visibility in their graphics over fancy filters, fog/smoke effects, and shadows. That's why I want more options. People have different ideas about what looks good. At least single player games you can get mods for removing things like that horrible green filter they slapped on Fallout 3. I don't want pretty, I don't want 'realistic'. I just want nice clear visuals that are easy on the eyes. Basically: I want the old very low shader settings back. Did graphics look awesome with that setting? No, but there were no dark shadows, no wonky colour filters you had to squint to see through, and everything was just plain easier to see. It's an option I'm asking for, nothing anyone has to use unless they want to.

Let's be realistic here, the current storyline is dragging on and on for years, is pretty much the same for both factions and all origin stories, and is really not worth taking more than a handful of characters through. It's a good compromise to have the legacy unlock, so players do have to do the storyline to open up the new daily areas, they just don't have to take every single alt through. I used to have a dozen alts keeping up the storyline, that's down to 3 now. None of those 3 are what I consider my endgame mains, so without the legacy unlock I just wouldn't do the newer daily areas.

Agreed, the pets are annoyingly persistant clutter, especially since so many players summon (or just don't bother dismissing them) even when you're in an operations group. Most players are pretty freaking rude if you ask them to dismiss pets too. I have friendly player names turned off, but kinda need the npc names, so the pet names keep floating around. Seeing the pets is bad enough, but I could deal with that if at least the names were hidden.

Vulkk has an update on the 7.5 livestream https://vulkk.com/2024/05/01/swtor-7-5-announced-new-story-and-spring-event-new-hutta-area-and-new-companion/ part of it is showing comparions of the current hutta, and the upcoming graphics update I realize it's not final, but from what's shown we're losing colour and clarity in favour of a hazy filter. For ... atmospheric reasons? I'll reserve judgement until after the update goes live, but seeing how the horrible fuzzy grass on Voss is still there, I'm thinking that, like Voss, the update will actually be a downgrade, not an upgrade. I don't know what's involved behind the scenes with these graphics updates, but if it is possible could we please have an option to keep the old look, or have a setting for clarity in graphics. There used to be a setting in graphics for 'very low shaders' that fixed a lot of visibility issues, but that was removed a while ago and never replaced with anything similar to make the game look brighter and clearer. This is not new areas of the game, this is messing up the old Vanilla game, and potentially making it worse (like Voss).

Is it another imperial alt you're taking? The Kessan's landing has different storylines for imp and pub, so it may be that you have to finish both before it opens up for all your alts. I did both imp and pub storylines, and have Kessan's Landing available for all my characters.

Except it's more than that. I checked last night by putting only system messages in one chat tab, and some of the audio queues in operations (all of the NPCs shout-outs for example) are under 'system message' instead of conversations for some reason. If you can't hear the NPCs, then you need the system messages, not often, but you still need them. It's not an issue most players will have, but for now it means I can't just shunt system messages off to it's own tab, and that means I won't sit in allies unless I'm not actively playing the game. Removing 'player joins/leaves' from system messages would be a great change.

Have no fear they nerfed the Master Mode flashpoints too. There's still some where if you mess up the mechanics it can be rough, but not many with real heal or dps checks left. Most story mode operations are just as easy (if not easier) then veteran flashpoints, so newer players pretty much never have to learn anything as basic 'move out of the boss' cleave and move out of aoe'. Even Hammer Station, which is run so often, has most tanks/dps with aggro, just stand there and eat sweeping blasters. Sure, you can heal through it, but it's also so easy to just run through the boss and avoid it, players make things harder then they have to be. I should clarify, the MM fp are easy IF you get at least 2 players who know what they're doing. Pugs are hit and miss. I mostly queue as dps for pugs nowadays, even though I prefer heals, since MM flashpoints are very frustrating if you end up with 2 bad dps on your team.

moving goalposts is just another reason to not bother hunting achievements

That's on the dev's for changing things 10 plus years after the game started. I'll try to change class/advanced class to origin story (or combat style depending on context) if I catch myself making the mistake of using the old terms in a post, but it's a hard habit to break.

Yes, that would be fantastic. As it is I'll join Allies rarely, and only if I'm actively looking to join an operations group when I'm not on fleet. I'll drop out of allies as soon as I'm in a group, those 'join/quit' messages are way to frequent and spammy. I can't just 'turn off system messages' since I can't hear any audio queues in the game, and need to read the system messages sometimes.

Exactly. Being bloodthirsty and arrogant is just being a Sith. Being incompetent though? The combo meant my light/neutrals AND my dark leaning alts all end up killing her. Think I left her alive on like one alt who I played as overly naive and nice.

I don't think I've ever unlocked it by accident, but there are a few places in the game where it unlocks automatically (aka: secrets of the enclave when it first came out). If you're unlocking it by misclicking, then maybe try just leaving that first slot blank. If you're clicking then it shouldn't matter if it's slot 1,2,3 ect, or slots 2, 3, 4, ect.